Radeon vs GeForce

If you're going for an AGP card, I'm quite satisfied with my Geforce 6600. It's not the abosulte best card you can get for AGP, but it handles shader 3.0 too and going any higher becomes ridiculously expensive for questionable gains. The 7800 GS is really more than you should put in a system that old, and you're going to feel silly spending $300 on a card that you cannot recycle when you finally upgrade your system.

There might be some ATI cards that measure up too, but I simply cannot reccommend ATI anymore. I've just had way too much grief trying to fuss with their shitty drivers. No matter how fine their cards might be, they're of no use if the drivers are broken.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

HardOCP says otherwise, but the difference is a big fat 3 FPS. That said, if you've already got the comparable ATI card, then you shouldn't be spending any money at all. I assumed you had something older than that; you pretty much have the biggest video card you can practically put in your machine. Put aside that money, and instead save up so when you upgrade, you can do your processor, mobo, and video card all in one go.

I have comparable specs, so I feel the pain of slightly outdated hardware too. But unless you have reason to believe it's going to be 3 years or more before you can do a full upgrade, there's little point spending $300 when in all likelihood you'll just have to throw the card away as soon as you buy it. I've looked, and AGP ports are pretty well phased out now.

There's nowhere I can't reach.