Good "gaming" video card for the price?

I'm looking for a decent video card for the price. I want it to run the infamous GTA IV. I've seen it run pretty great on an nvidia 9600gt card... would this also be the first thing to consider when upgrading my PC? I eventually want to make it into a decent gaming PC. Any recommendations for hardware are greatly appreciated. d|||Yes, the 9600GT is an excellent card. I have it and it runs everything I want perfectly at 1680x1050 (Oblivion, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, Counter Strike: Source, some Crysis)



A graphics card would provide the biggest improvement, yes.|||Yeah the 9600GT is a pretty sweet card.

you might wanna consider the new intel i7 cpu if you got the cash for it...



consider

9800

9600gt as you said

8800gt

gtx260 / gtx280 .again if you got the cash





be sure to get at least 2gb of ram

i recommend 4gb



processor wise i think any dualcore will run GTA IV (coupled with decent graphics etc) but i think you would want some of the high end duals such as the IC2D that runs at 3.0Ghz or 2.66Ghz maybe the quads q6600 if you can get an i7 board so you are more future proof as all the hardware becomes almost obsolete once its shipped out...

i while ago i got a q6600 with 8600GT with 8GB of RAM but now the i7s are out i dont feel as proud lolz!



good luck with it all. happy computing!|||9600GTs are midrange cards. As far as nVidia's Geforce cards go ..I'd at least shoot for a 9800GTX+.



I've heard a lot about ATI's Radeon HD4000 series and supposably the 4850/4870 cards perform better than comparable Geforce cards.



From how I understand things on a price/performance ratio on a 20/22" screen:

HD4850 = 9800GTX+

HD4870 is slightly better than the GTX 260

HD4870 < GTX 280

HD4870 X2 > GTX 280



**I think the HD4850 or the 9800GTX+ would be the two cards you should look at. Prices for those two cards on Newegg are great.**|||ati radeon 9800 pro. 128 mb ddr. i would not reccomend this for vista and gta 4 but for xp and gta4 this card should work great.

(hint:pick it up on ebay. nowhere else.)