Need help choosing a Video Card for S-Video Output to TV

Ok, so I'm looking to purchase a pretty cheap Video Card that would work great for S-Video Output to TV and playing several newer games without glitching and lagging (Crysis, GTA IV, Left 4 Dead, and Assassin's Creed).

I had a NVidia Geforce 6800, but it ended up completly frying somehow. It worked great for doing output to my TV via S-Video, but unfortunately the graphics while playing games was a bit choppy and laggy at times. Most of the time it played videos pretty well, other than when I'd preview video's that I'm editing in Sony Vegas and Adobe After Effects.

So just to explain my story, last night my computer randomly shutdown and I could tell that because of the way it shutdown that something was wrong with it. I tried turning it back on and had no luck (The power would glitch on for a split second before slowly dying down). I opened up the case and after messing around with the Power Supply for a bit I realized that the reason it wasn't turning on is because of my NVidia still being plugged into my Power Supply, after I unplugged it my computer would turn on, but I'd hear a loud screeching noise from my PC which was alerting me that something wasn't plugged in correctly (A video card). So I switched out my NVidia Video Card (Sadly, I hated to do this, I loved it) and had to replace it with a shitty ATI 128 Rage All In Wonder Video Card that I had lying around. I haven't noticed much of a difference since replacing it, other than I can't do Plug and Play with it which absolutely pisses me off, because I hate not being able to watch video's from my PC onto my TV. I'm also a bit frustrated because I had that NVidia card for about 5 years now and I only got to use the S-Video output function for less than a year since I had no idea that the card had that capability....

So if NVidia is the choice for me, what version should I get? I want to get a version that has a very similar Plug and Play format to that of the 6800 as I loved all of the options it had (Single Monitor, Dual Display, etc), it was just really easy to navigate through. I found a 9300, 9400, and 9500 all on Ebay for around $20-$30 brand new, and those seem like pretty recent versions of GeForce cards so I'm assuming they would atleast be good for gameplay.

 

Is that the price range current budget allows? If so, understand that is entry level technology that does not fit well with your following statement,

Understand that gaming is one of the most EXTREME tasks we can ask of system resources (CPU horsepower & RAM), and especially graphics resources (GPU horsepower and dedicated graphics RAM). Suggesting a $30 graphics card will "at least be good for gameplay" is not a reflection of reality with today's demanding 3D animated games and the hardware to run them at realistic, widescreen resolutions at 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratios. If a computer is "good for gameplay", then it is ready for just about any demanding task you could throw at it.

Then why waste money? It would be better to wait until your budget allows you to buy a widescreen LCD TV/monitor that supports a digital input (DVI or HDMI). Then buy a card that supports high resolution, digital graphics and enjoy the hard work programmers put in your favorite programs to give you great graphics. S-Video provides low-resolution analog only.

I recommend for now, you go out to AMD/ATI and make sure you have the latest drivers for your Rage 128 AIW card and stick with that until your budget allows you to upgrade your entire graphics solution.

Generally speaking with graphics cards, you get what you pay for. A $30 card is probably better than most on-board (integrated into the motherboard) graphics solutions, but that is still very entry level technology, more for email, surfing the Internet, and watching an occasional DVD.

You are limited by the outdated AGP interface of the motherboard and can never achieve top performance of the top PCI Express cards - some costing as much as $750! or more. But there are still some great AGP cards being produced with the best based on the Radeon 3850. Those cost around $200 - a lot for card that will not be usable with your next motherboard, but "good for gaming" - actually, "very good".

A better compromise would be a card in the $50 - $100 price range. Put that with an entry level monitor like the ASUS 20" Widescreen monitor for $120 and you have a fairly decent system. Note that card nicely supports two digital outputs for dual monitor setups - the only way to go, IMO.

If you must have a TV/Monitor, then you will need to budget a bit more, depending on the size you want. In any case, I would not waste money on a $30 card.