I'm using a Nvidia geforce fx 5500 and it runs most of what I throw at it. You can't run a game with everything on Very High, but High/VeryHigh(mixed) it runs fine. In short, it was a kickass card for the price.

Theodis wrote:

I'm thinking about getting a new video card sometime soon and was wondering if anyone with more knowledge on the subject could make suggestions about what would be good to get. Primarily if I should go for an ATI or NVIDIA card.

Depends what you want to do with it.

If you want to do high definition affordable gaming, an nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT would do the trick. If you've got a compatible motherboard, you could add another one (but beware, a GeForce 6800 GT would work better than two 6600's.)

Basically the advantage to NVIDIA and ATI is that most of the higher end NVIDIA cards have Shader Model 3.0, which some games require to play.

I'm using a Radeon 9000 and it works fine for me. (Though I plan on upgrading also to a GeForce 6800 GT, for gaming needs =P). If you aren't doing much gaming, then get one of the more affordable cards. Another computer in my house has a GeForce FX 5600 XT, and it works great (better than the ATI Radeon 9000 series). I'm not sure about ATI, because I haven't done much research on those, so I can't say which one is better.

I can't really say that much more if I don't know what you want do with your computer, but the GeForce 6 series would do good if you're gaming. The lower end (but still awesome) GeForce FX and Radeon series would do well if you're doing some light gaming. If you aren't doing much gaming/media at all, don't spend a whole lot of money on a newer video card. (Unless your video card is really garbage)

Conclusion (for the nVidia ones), FX series for average, 6 series for more serious.

Just to clarify, if your processor is not good enough comparing to your video card, it may actually hurt your video card performance and even overall computer. (ie: An old 500 MHz computer using a GeForce 6800, uh.. no.)

Hope I helped a bit, and please someone correct me if I said something inaccurate.

~~> Dragon Lord

Also, the pricetag is low, but what you get will still run most game on high settings. Only games I have had problems with are the large battlefield games. (Joint Ops and Battlefield2 are good examples). But they only give me trouble when in high showdows and refection modes, everything else is fine high.