Please help upgrade graphics card

[scourge]

I have $75 to spend and that is it.

I consider myself to be more informed than the average person, but I can't keep up with all the different variations of video chipsets and clock speeds, etc.

My current setup:
ECS K7S5A Pro / AMD XP 2400+ CPU (266FSB)
512MB PC2100
Windows 2000 Pro
Radeon 9100 64MB
SB Live!

I like to play games at 1024x768 on my 19" monitor. I am currently playing Doom 3 which has really bogged down my Radeon 9100 at 1024x768 and that's with low quality settings. I'm not a heavy gamer so I don't need all the eye candy, but I would like nice, fluid gameplay.

Please keep in mind that my mobo only supports 4x AGP.

I saw this at Best Buy:
BFG Geforce FX 5500 OC 128MB AGP $59.99AR
Would this be a significant upgrade? Would I see dramatic improvement? Would it even work on my old mobo?

Any other suggestions? Thanks!

[proffit]

well for that much you are looking in the 9600 se edition which will be a alot more power full then the 9100 you have but still not as power full as you wold like to play games. add another 10 or 15 to your budget and get your self a 9600 pro it is alot more powerfull then the se model and is well worth the few extra bucks.

[proffit]

just looked around and found this http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...pe=Refurbished
personly to play doom 3 you need to get a pro or the se will be abit to weak and it will be choppy at low lvls.

[nwo75200]

you will notice a significant improvement, but not too significant. If you get the 9600pro, you could play doom3 @ medium and at the specified resolution

Any AGP 8x card you choose will work in your mobo because AGP 8x cards are fully compatible with AGP 4x motherboards

[scourge]

So I did some digging on neweggs website and I see Radeon 9550's and 9600, 9600se, 9600le, 9600 pro some are 64bit some 128bit. Different clock speeds for core and memory and although they are all directx 9 cards some say opengl 1.3 or 1.5 or 2.0. The designations of se, le, and pro don't always seem to show any differences. What are the key things I need to look for when buying? What gives me the best bang for buck? Thanks!

[EpyonMelee]

i think that going for the 9550 would be the best, since it is so easily overclockable.

ask sweeper, he has had amazing results with the card.

[nwo75200]

the best bang for the buck would probably be the 9550 while the best one out of the ones you mentioned would be the 9600pro. There is a lot more things you should look at in a card except the clock speeds, which really don't mean anything.

[SpaceSquad]

ya, 9550, but make certain that it has 128 bit memory - 64 bit is ghey