If anyone is pondering investment strategies on this, it may be worthwhile to go to #bitcoin-otc (otc=over the counter) on freenode and see if you can find a trustworthy individual to host a card. Typing ;;getrating <username> can let you see if they have done business in the past and received good ratings. I was able to purchase three months of time on a 5970 card for $480 USD. Depending on difficulty levels in the future I could get as much as 1000 or as little as 350 bitcoins. The person I traded with gets the advantage of not having to sell their bitcoins for dollars to purchase the card, so they can take advantage of bitcoin deflation. Part of the reason I did this instead of buying my own card was because I do not have a desktop PC, just a netbook at home.