First question before suggesting anything... what are you going to be doing?

Unless you do a lot of gaming, anything by Nvidia and ATI is going to be a waste. Get a Matrox G550 ($125 or less). It doesn't have great 3d... about on part with a GeForce 2.... but the regular Windows performance and quality is years beyond anything nvidia and ati has.

If you do a lot of gaming... I'd go with something by Nvidia, I've used a couple on other peoples systems and have built a couple systems for people with them. I've never had good times with ATI cards/drivers.

Which one? Which ever one is the highest your willing to spend. You get what you pay for. More money, more speed, more options.

 

you wont be able to find a "PRO" with the L shaped memory, you can only find a "non PRO" with L shaped memory and it'll only turn it into a 9700non pro, only turn it into a 9700 pro if you overclock it.

 

yes i do a lot of gaming i mean other than han and anime all i do is gaming so yeah this video card is meant to handle HL2 and the newer games so i'm looking for something that can handle those kind of graphics

 

Then my take on things would be:

1) find out just how much you want to spend.
2) Go around to some websites and find Nvidia cards (ignore ati) that are +/- $20 of what your looking to spend.
3) Re-evaluate how much your looking to spend. Either increase, decrease, or stay the same.
4) Repeat step 2.
5) With the card/model. Go around to some MORE websites and price it. If most of the prices are mostly the same, skip to step 7.
6) If they are largely diffrent, then go with the 3 lowest priced places. And go back to step 3.
Why go back to step 3? Cause if there's some place that has the card $50 cheaper than anywhere else... maybe better to go with the next model up.
7) Made it this far? Good. Go back to step 3. Make sure it's what your looking to spend. Adjust if needed. Make sure you figure in shipping and handling. If your sure you want it, step 8.
8) Buy it. wait..... then enjoy.

Crazy? Yea. I use these steps whenever I buy something. Online or off.

Some sites to check for prices.
www.newegg.com <<My fav!
www.accessmicro.com
www.mwave.com
www.tigerdirect.com
www.bestbuy.com
www.circuitcity.com
www.compusa.com
www.walmart.com
www.frys.com
www.pcconnection.com
www.cdw.com
www.microwarehouse.com

Good site for searching other sites:
www.pricewatch.com
www.pricescan.com
shopper.cnet.com
www.streetprices.com

 

i would've said the same praise over nvidia before they released the FX series. each and every FX series card is pure crap and ATI eats them alive every time. if you are looking for an nvidia card, get at least a Gforce-3(not MX, they bite worse than the FX series cards).

as far as ATI, i will say one thing about them. they are very solid cards once you get a driver that's not buggy, but buggy drivers are to be expected of new to the market hardware. i have a radeon 9800 pro and i love it. the picture quality is so much cleaner than the nvidia chipset cards i've seen(gforce 3/4/fx). all in all do what you wanna do, but don't limit yourself to one brand. do the research and look at the benchmarks. 8xAGP owns nvidia

 

Speaking of 8xAGP... don't let ATI fool you.... Matrox has 8x AGP long before they did. ATI is probably the first MAINSTREAM with 8x... but not the first. But... that doesn't really matter so I'll go whore else where. "ohhhhh.... some animal died"

 

....what do you guys think of the fx5200? or another card around $80 h:

 

**** Nvidia. Go Radeon.

 

to put it short... i'd rather plug a turd into my AGP slot than that

 

how many FPS with turd?