Im living in South America, and ping values are ever high, i know thats above 1000 sometimes in Argentina, here in my city flucts between 260 and 350 with one cable ADSL connection, but there are problems with the damned ISP, that guys usually connect 4 or 5 users in 1 point in the telephone net in the city.
You can buy the best machine, with multiple processors, many gigs on DDR, can do overclock, isnt necesary for freelancer, if you have ISP issues, forget a good ping values.