I had mine replaced about a month ago. Here is a thread I started about my valve covers with some pics.
http://www.Xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...-my-4-6-a.html
I would say do it if you care about the X and plan on keeping it. Oil leaking should never be normal for any car except a rotory
.
The oil on the plugs will cause your coils to go bad and surge from misfire. I have replaced 2 coils and they were the ones that had oil on them. I think the total for the gasket job was around $900. I also ended up getting new valve covers as well, $300 each
. But the old valve covers were so bad and the local machine shop tried cleaning them and I didn't care for how they looked.