If you're stuck with AGP and a budget of $80, your best bet is a Radeon 9600XT (newegg has one for $62, but the reviews show that quality on that particular board may be hit and miss--it's up to you). The XT models are clocked 25% higher than the PRO version. I used a gigabyte 9600XT myself for several years, and it ran GC2 beautifully.

Bummer I did'nt see it sooner, I just upgraded to a X1950Pro I would of sold you my X1600 Pro 512mb for $100.00 shipped. If your interested drop me a line. I can do Paypal.

I would like a new video card too. I have an HP P4 3.2 with 1 gig mem but an old
Radeon X300 card (PCI-express). But many of the cards require a lot of power
But my HP power supply is 300 watts and even though it is an ATX, I am told that the screw holes won't line up with replacement power supplies. I am not much into modding my computer. Many of the video cards claim they want 400 watts total. Some have no information.

Not sure whether to take a chance with an upgraded video card and see if the power supply can handle it or not. If I lose, I suppose I could fry the system.

If you ask too much of a PSU, it is possible to damage it or cause it to fail prematurely. And while some PSUs go out with a whimper, some also go out with a bang...   

It shouldn't, at least not enough to worry about.

i have a 255 watt PS and it's running a radeon X600 and a pentium D. how it's running them is beyond me, but whatever.

since this is sort of on the subject, it's a low profile system (a dell xps200), and i think the power supply was made so low to avoid overheating. i want to upgrade to an x1600pro (which seems to be the best low profile card available), but i'm worried it'd need more power (especially since the 600 is cooled by heatsinks, and the 1600s i've seen all have fans).

the low profile design doesn't leave much room. i'm worried that upgrading the power will create more heat, despite the fact that i'm sure dell used a very poor stock fan on the current PS. so that means i need new fans, but the only space is for an 85mm frontside intake fan. has anyone seen any 3.5 bay fans? my small bay is currently unused. stupid dell. i've seen PCI slot fans, but not for an LP design, and i've only got one PCI-e X1 slot to spare, which i was hoping to save for a TV card.

anyway, some advice would definately be appriciated.

That's a crock of crap! I have two HP's and the 700w Gamextreme slid right in and lined up no problem. I had the same issues as you with regards to buying a new card that required at least 400w so I upgraded the ps. Now I have a TON of extra juice for the future and no worries about lack of power during heavy PC sessions. It was worth the 150.00 for the power supply. If you plan on upgrading your PC in the future, make the investment. Just make sure the mobo is upgradeable enough to your liking before wasting the money.

Silly question:
Will a better video card help me rip DVDs faster? Or is that purely a CPU function? And it suddenly occurs to me that even asking that question might be illegal...

w00t!
The card arrived, the card is installed, the new drivers are downloaded and.. the game crashed. I was using a save game, does that matter?

Did you do an uninstall of the old drivers through Add/Remove Programs, reboot, then install the new drivers?
Or did you install them over the top of the old ones?

I sure did! What I hadn't done was reboot it a second time to let the new settings settle in. It's now running just fine. And the game looks _outstanding_...

Glad you solved it!