A couple of weeks ago my motherboard died because it got a short from a broken front usb port. I replaced the usb and motherboard everything was perfect. Until I returned home this morning and tried to boot up the computer and I can hear my computer startup vista. But no video so I unplug the video card and reconnect still no video. I hooked my monitor up to my laptop and it came on any ideas of what could be wrong with the card. It's a Nvida Gforce 6200 turbo cache.

Doesn't sound promising - the Card may have been damaged when the USB incident happened.

Can you beg borrow or steal a card off someone to try?.

May be a blessing in disguise, there's a lot of decent AGP cards going cheap - at least here - as they've been superceded. ie 9600Xt $80 au

I thought AGP cards were on their way out? I thought that if you wanted the card for editing and games you needed a pci express or something?

Ooops, I assumed the 6200 was AGP.

If it is, you've obviously bought a Motherboard to suit.

Is it PCIe ?

Yup it is a PCIe. My motherboard is a MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum if that helps. I'm would replace it with something that cost less the $150 US.

Ah, I need another coffee obviously - it's 5.30 in the morning here.

I suppose just browse your local shops & see whats on offer.

Toms hardware have some VGA Charts that compare a lot of cards so you can see what'll give you the most "bang for your buck".

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=740&model2=722&chart=309

I'd imagine the 79xx series Nvidia would be in that price bracket, maybe the X1950 ATI.

I have one more question. My computer has DDR memory does this mean I can't buy a video card that says DDR2 or 3?

Not at all, that is referring to the RAM on the Vid Card. Completely seperate from the Motherboard RAM.

Any PCIe card will be compatible.

Note that Higer End cards can use a lot of juice, so make sure you have a resonable Power Supply. ATI tend to be more power hungry than NVidia, but thats obviously dependant on model etc.

I recently went from a 6600GT to a 7900GS and am impressed - I don't have a big budget

Thanks a lot I now have to do something review readings

It'll cure insomnia!