Half-Life 2 and it's variants, ut2004, some other games as well.
These all run great on a 128mb card. No problems at all. If you decided to go cheap and get a 128 over a 256, then you wouldn't regret it with those games.
But what about now? those cards aren't even funny to talk about when games like Crysis and all these unreal engine3 games are around.
If person A spent $150 on a 128 mb card and person B spent $250 on a 256 mb card, then by your theory person B was a dumbass.
..yet person A now has poor performance with the newer games and must spend well over $200 to make up for it these days..
...and person B doesn't have to upgrade to play these newer games... because I am person B, and I play these newer games just fine.
How do I base this? well.. My card is 256 megs. It does it's job still. Can any of you sincerely tell me that a 128mb card is even worthy of standing in the presence of Unreal3 powered games.. let alone crysis?...
So as you can see, person A spent more money in the end, just to become content with his game... while person B was never discontent in the first place.
I had to decide between this and some other 128 mb card, the savings was about $100 to go with the 128.. all while knowing that the games I wanted to play would perform exactly the same between the two cards.. but then I realized that being forced to upgrade to perhaps a $300 video card is a bit more costly than spending an extra $100 initially..
The initial savings don't make up for what you pay later.
Now, who got ripped off again?