PCIe GFX card recommendations?

Decided to take a look at getting a new PC built rather then fix my old one, as the cost of replacing both my mobo & CPU is going to cost me a sweet penny (more-so on the CPU).

The current system in mind will be using a PCIe motheboard, so I wont be locked into the dying AGP card slot when it comes to upgrading the vid card, but as of now, I'm really having trouble finding a good priced card for the Express series, as I already got my mind set on all the other parts.

Been mainly looking at the nVidia cards since I've had nothing but bad experiances with ATI, the PCIe 6800GS seems like the current choice as it's comparable with my current AGP 6800GT which is just sitting in my dead PC (but still works), but looking at other options, I see things like the 7600 series being close-priced, but cant really see much difference in why its better over the other and what not, and looking up at the higher end of the spectrum, they just get way too expensive.

Just basically asking what some of you guys may have had experiances with, with regards to best bang for your buck, but packs a good performance.

Really at a lost here on where to look for info regarding the cards, I just ignored anything PCIe related back then as they were god-awful expensive at the time, but now that they've come down and seem to be the only option available, well, it hurts not having done my research. I dont mind getting me a comparable card to my last 6800GT, but if I'm going with a new PC, may as well bump it up a notch no?
(already got the thing with a 3.2ghz AMD64, along with 2gb of DDR2 ram set for ordering in atm to slap into the tower)

I just got a 7600GS, made by XFX, a few weeks ago and am very happy with it. It's at the budget end of the price spectrum. I paid $135US at newegg.com.

It's newer technology than the 6800 series, drawing less electric current. This means it runs just fine on a 300W power supply. As a result it generates less heat and doesn't have, or need, a fan. It is completely silent. No desktop leaf blower for me.

I got me an X600XT when it first came out. It's served me quite well since. My experience is somewhat different from yours. I switched because I was tired of having to install different nVidia drivers whenever I wanted to play a different game. It was nice to get an ATi card, install whatever Catalyst drivers came with it, and never have to bother with it again.

Got a 480w PSU here so I wont be hurting for power.

How is the speed of the card btw? Just the fact it doesn't need a fan worries me.

And god, Sony needs to add keyboard support to the PSP pronto, surfing on this thing is hell.

Try surfing the web on a PSP with no screen...

Anyhow, I have an x1300 PCI-E which is supposed to be less powerfull than the 6800AGP, but I'm getting higher framerates with it than I was with the 6800, plus a much much nicer SVideo Out.

At some point after the introduction of the GeForce4 nvidia blue screened my windows and so i went over to ATI. Till now i never regreted it. The only thing i miss is the unbeatable filtering quality my GeForce3 offered.

Amongst others ATI doesn't blue screen my system and has a much nicer AA. One drawback is that you need .net for their latest drivers.

Although i haven't looked much into gfx-cards these days, as i'm still happy with my ATI 9800pro and that such things depend on what you specifically want, i would say that:

In the price range of a 7600er i would go for a ATI X1600XT. It isn't the fastest card in all areas but it's a nice allrounder and the overall experience of ATI is better in my opinion.

Above that i would go for a Radeon X1900 GT (no retail?) or a Radeon X1900 GTO...

Personally i will definately wait till the DirectX10 chips are around.

x1900xt here, it plays stuff like wow @ 1280x1024 with full detail and fsaa on max without any problems. I'd just go for this and nothing less.

Prices are dropping all the time?

Beware that the newer 7900 series cards cause a lot of problem. Many of them are defect! Also why not wait a bit till the end of the year for a dx10 card?

So this would mean the 7600GT suffers the same probs?

In the end a 6800GS / X1800(XT) should do the job as well :-)

And if you need a DX10 chip. Get an X360 and pull out the ATI Chip ... thats already DX10 technology (48 Unified shader pipes)

Huh?

My x1900XT has 48 Unified shader pipes and it's DX9. Another dreamora moment!

I don't know for the 7600. I think its only the 7900 series!

There are dozens of articles about it on the net. E.G.:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA2OSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

I get the feeling at this point it may just be better to replace my mobo/cpu for my current PC and just wait awhile (as well as maybe bumping the ram up from 1gb to 2gb), it appears anything decent for PCIe is a bit out of my price-range, and it doesn't really seem sensible to buy a 6800GT equivelent, when I can just save a few bucks and stick with an AGP mobo and use my current one.

Didn't think about DX10 also as it's nearly around the corner, wont be long before the DX9 cards drop in price because of them being "outdated" in the consumers eye. ;P

AFAIK, it's only *overclocked* cards that have problems.

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Oh...Just noticed that the article you pointed to does explain that.
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