8800GTX FTW, I love mine. Keep being tempted to get a 58**, but my 3 year old GTX runs everything I want at nice settings and acceptable framerates.
Absolutely agreed. We both bought ours 3 years ago and I'm in the very same position as you.
Another 8800GTX? I've seen them very cheap second hand. If he's playing at under 1920x1200 a Radeon 4850 is roughly the same performance too.
New ones are hard to find and the cheapest I found was 170€, which seems very harsh to me.
I'll ask him how he feels about buying used ones.