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You're in a tight situation with a low budget concerning videocards. Why? Because many of the major hardware benchmarking sites don't benchmark the low-end videocards against the older, top of the line videocards of their day. So a new, low-end videocard is probably not as good as an older, top of the line card that was the best when it came out, even though they're the same price. All hardware sites care about now is the absolute best. Hell, even when they do review low-end cards, they don't even compare them to high end cards or cards out of the current generation. It really makes it hard to determine which low-end cards are the best "bang for the buck." Even worse, some sites benchmark the newest top of the line cards against the last generation cards and completely leave out the current-gen low-end cards. Why can't they just show us how well the low-end cards perform compared to current AND older cards!!
The only reason I haven't made major updates to the low-end videocard section of my guide is due to a severe lack of benchmarking results for the aforementioned cards. Due to the lack of information, here's the following cards I recommend for $50-$100:
Radeon 9600 Pro
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
GeForce 6600
Radeon 9800
GeForce FX 5900
Radeon X700
Keep in mind that going up to $120-$130 puts you in the "insanely good deal" range with the Radeon 9800 Pro for only $120-$130. If you can't squeeze an extra twenty or thirty bucks out, the best deal for under $100 are listed above. I'd personally look for the GeForce 6600 first.
-Lasereth
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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert
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