Best value in affordable vid cards?

Hi all. I am looking to purchase a 3D card for under $200. Actually, the most I really want to spend is $150, but I might stretch the budget a bit if it seems worth it. On the other hand, if most cards in the $100 neighborhood are very close in quality to the cards in the $150-$200 neighborhood, I would just as soon buy a $100 card now and plan on buying a monster card a year or two down the road when a new generation comes out.

The only "must-have" requirements are that it must have 256 megs, and it must be able to play Battlefield 2 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (hopefully at a good framerate, with all settings minimized). For comparison, I am currently using an OEM GeForce FX 5200 / 128 meg.

Thanks in advance for any input! =)

 

hmm, I guess I would also like to be able to play Elder Scrolls 4 if that is even remotely feasible for a low-midrange card.

 

being an FX5200, im guessing you have an AGP slot for video cards?

if so, these would be good for you:

(probably your best bet)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143045

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102057

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150157
(i have this card, runs BF2 on full w/ 2x AA, GRAW on full, and Oblivion on medium) It overclocks very well too which REALLY improves its performance.

if you have any more questions feel free to ask

 

Here are a bunch of cards you can check out...

Since Oblivion is probably the most demanding you can check here to compare something in your price range.

I play Oblivion just fine on a ATI Radeon X1600 pro 512 MB
If you have a PCIe slot

I think it runs now for about $150

 

ty sir, yes, I do have AGP and I think it's 8x.. sorry for leaving that out.

I am not going to fool with overclocking, but I will definitely check into the products you listed.. they look like good cards at good prices. Thanks!

Oh.. one other thing. I work in front of a computer all day and I like to play games as much as possible. However, I don't want to die of face cancer at the age of 35 from spending tens of thousands of hours sitting 2 feet from a CRT.

I used to hear vague complaints that LCD screens were bad for gaming due to low refresh rate or sync issues or even just inadequate brightness. Are these complaints now, or were they ever, valid? If not, are most typical LCDs equally good for gaming or is there some special feature set I need to look for ?

 

CRT screens can cause eye strain if the refresh rate is too low. Right click your desktop, go to Properties->Settings->Advanced->Monitor and set the refresh rate as high as it will allow. LCDs CAN be better for gaming but the budget ones tend to have a higher response time (gaming LCDs are usually 8ms or less) LCDs do fine at lower refresh rates since they display images differently than CRTs do.

 

For AGP:

BFG Tech Geforce 6800GS

While it looks seemingly the same to the 6800XT, it's not, actually a bit faster due to 12 Pixel Pipelines instead of 8 and a higher stock Core Clock.

 

ill agree the 6800 from BFG is your best choice for a 'budget' card, i wish i would of got that instead of my 6200 but it was 75dollars more at the time :|

 

Or he could get a radeon x1300 with 256 megs and they aren't real expensive for around 130.00 i should know i have a radeon x1300 pro with 256 megs of ram and i do have oblivion and it runs just fine on my machine and my video card is agp 4x.

 

the XFX 6800XTreme, when overclocked (core 500 memory 1300), beats an x1600PRO and comes near to a 7600GT. Runs BF2, BF 2142, HL2 on full and oblivion on medium with good framerates. But, if u can, get the 6800GS

 

Just for the sake of saying "thanks" for the suggestions and supporting the MG community, I would like to point out that I ultimately logged on to Tiger Direct and purchased a 6800GS OC based on the recommendations on this forum

 

Have fun!