Hey guys I play a lot of games on and off when I get the chance and it seems that lowering the in-game video settings isn't going to cut it anymore.

when i run dxdiag it says: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 - 128MB
Dell Dimension 8300, Pentium 4 3.20 GHz, 1022MB on XP Home Edition

To be honest i probably shouldn't be touching or opening up my computer with my limited knowledge, but i was hoping i could get some help here.

What I want is really just to be able to play all of the new and upcoming games. It doesn't have to be the best quality or anything really. This is just one of my systems I hook up to the LAN when I have friends over and i just need it to be functional. So really I need something that is compatible with most games, with my system, and relatively easy to install.

With this 5200 I've gotten Company of Heroes, HL2, Lego Star Wars II the original trilogy, dreamfall:the longest journey, the new sam & max episodes, swat 4, civilization iv, dawn of war: dark crusade, COD2, the settlers ii: 10th anniversary edition all working. But the more demanding ones like CoH and Dreamfall TLJ, i've had to lower the in-game settings to get it running smoothly, and I couldn't get a bunch of other games working like most of the tom clancy games that need pixel shader 3.0 support (don't know what this is), the swat 4 exp pack, and also I tried Europa Universalis III today and that won't really run at a playable rate (they specifically tell GeForce 5000 users that they need to upgrade to at least the 6000 series to be able to play). In the future i plan to get games like LOTR battle for middle earth, tom clancy's chaos theory, rainbow six vegas, double agent, etc., galactic civilizations ii: dark avatar... basically any new strategy games, or any FPS games with co-op.

So could someone recommend me a few cards? I found this forum through this thread where someone with a dimension 8300 and MX 420 card was recommended these only like a month ago:

The first link doesn't work though. And another newbie question - i've been looking around... how come so many different companies manufacture geforce cards? Are they all making stuff for nvidia or are they imitations? I would probably pay at most $100-150 but cheaper is better hehe. Thanks for the input guys. It's very much appreciated... sorry it's such a long post.

Hey i've been doing a lot of reading... and I read a few articles about good 'value' cards at sites like tom's hardware and have come to the conclusion that the 7600 GT might be a good idea for me. What do you guys think? Is this compatible with my system and does it make sense for me? Am I looking for the right thing even? I want PCI and not AGP right?

Also what is the difference between say a... eVGA, XFX, BFG, Asus, Msi, BioForce, etc. 7600 GT? I have gathered that some manufacturers pre-overclock it for you out of the factory... is that the difference between the different brands? How important is this? I think for me, it's best to get the cheapest one... yes?

The BFG 7600 GT is 142.99 USD while the eVGA is only 109.99 without s&h from newegg. That's a big difference to me.

Hmm... I just found this but newegg is selling the eVGA 7600 GS for 89.99 with a $20 rebate so it's 70 bucks plus 5 dollars for s&h. What is the difference between the 7600 GT and GS? They're both listed as good value cards:
- http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/02/...for_the_money/
- http://internetgames.about.com/cs/to...videocards.htm

thanks again!

edit: actually the $20 rebate is good for any evga 7600 GS and GT, 7800 GS, 8800 GTX and GTS bought on newegg... but only for very specific models that I couldn't find. It is sooo confusing how many different makes of one 7600 GT / GS model there are !!!!

Might want to go with Geforce 6 series with 256MB DDR2 and more 400MHz for Clock Speed. The Geforce FX Series is very old now and slow in some areas.