It can be a crapshoot with overloaded/oversubscribed... but you get a few vendors that actually do a good job. DM me and I'll send you a few I've worked with in the past. $1/mo or less is a gamble... if you pay $2/mo you get KVM VPS which is better than OpenVZ. I suggest you read lowendtalk or lowendbox and also read reviews of the company. My recommendation is never go for the 3yr double the resources offer because you don't know if the host will be around that long. Maybe 1 yr is worth the risk, but go monthly if you can.