The catalyst 4.12 drivers are supposed to be best for the radeon cards. People say the all the ones after 4.12 were built with the x800 cards in mind.

ifu can afford just a little more $100 give or take get a

ati 9600 pro. 256 bit 128 ram card if u got the agp slot

i play hl2 pretty smotoh on my system with it on singleplayer

settings in game maxed antialiasng, 16x antistropic "or however u spell it hehe",,, medium model detail, medium textures, reflect all, low shadows, high shader

AA and As make up for the med textures my game looked sweet all thru my sys specs are

win xp, 512 mb ram, 9600 pro, p4 2.6ghz, 30 gig hard drvie

If I was you I would get the PCI version of the 5700 which is the highest PCI card you can get for the PCI interface or was up until a few months ago or last time I checked. The difference between the ATI card and the 5500 is pretty big considering the price difference. I think you can get the 5700 in PCI for around 120 bucks. I have the AGP version of gainwards 5700 and it plays all games pretty decent.

The big thing to remember when buying a video card is not how much ram it has but how fast the ram is and processer is on the card.