Gaming Upgrading my Video card

[Licardo7]

Well, I was playing my Halo game and it was sorta jerky. I always thought that it was just that my computer was slow but then I thought. My computer is not slow, it can't be because it doesn't have any viruses, Trojans, and I don't have a lot installed (I have 172 GB of free space). Then I looked at my computer settings and I found out I have a NVIDIA Geforce 6150 LE video card(I have it on a Vista). I searched in Google to see how good is the card and I found out it sucks (big surprise

) The card is only good for playing old games like CSS, TMNF, HL, exc and sucks for playing new games like Halo2, GoW, BioShock, Crysis(these games are a whole other level), and other games like this.

What I want to find out is what Video Cards are good and cheap. I want a card that could play games really smoothly but is still under my $150 dollar limit. I don't expect a card that will play Crysis like a dream on high resolution but I want games to at lest run at great rates at low or mid resolution. I am willing to pay more for a card if you say it's just pure greatness but if it's like another card that's cheaper than I won't even bother.

An other thing is that I heard that the NVIDIA Geforce 6150 LE is attached to the mother board, if it's true is it going to be a problem.

 

[Diablo1123]

An intergrated video card is okay as long as you have another PCI slot
I upgrade my video card recently and it works fine now

I play Crysis on lowest settings though

Installing is pretty easy, drivers are a pain though

 

[Licardo7]

I do have another PCI slot but can you tell me how you upgraded your video card. Did you install a software or install a new crad?

Edit: I have a new question. What is the best NVIDIA GeForce card that's under $120

 

[Bourbanog]

At that budget? You might be looking at a Geforce 8800 if you can find one... Or you might have to go down to a 8600.

I'd recommend bumping your budget up a little bit. Getting something like a $200 Radeon 4850 plays everything great- and will do for quite some time.

Though there's no use if it's bottlenecked by your other components. What's your CPU, RAM and Mobo?

 

[Try2bcool]

I hope when you say you have a PCI slot you mean PCI Express, 'coz you're going to need PCI-E or AGP slot if you're going to jump to like a 8600GT or higher, you would probably have a hard time finding any of the mid to high end cards that come in a regular PCI configuration.
I upgraded a Geforce 6600 to a 8600GT (both are PCI-E), and I played Crysis at 1440x900 on medium detail, and it was pretty smooth.

 

[Licardo7]

@Bourbanog
I did say I am willing to go up on my budget if you guys say there's a card that is really really good.

Prosesor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.4 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Mother Board: I don't really know that one so I went online and found that it is a 2000 MHz

Is the Radeon 4850 really that good?

@Try2bcool
Actually, I do.
I got an PCI Express x16 x 1 • PCI x 3 if that helps.

 

[Diablo1123]

It's pretty easy to upgrade in my opinion.
Open the computer, remove the protective plating, insert the new card and secure it, boot up computer to make sure it works, if it does, then close the computer.

I had problems because I forgot to uninstlal my previous drivers, so make sure you do that first.