Graphics Card upgrade

[tecnowraith]

Hey all, I need some advice. I am ready to upgrade my graphics card in time WOW: Cataclysm and I do not want spend more than $100. Which manufacture and brand is good these days?

 

[Aus_Snow]

What kind of power supply do you have in the PC?


edit: Actually, it'd also be very handy to know the CPU, motherboard, RAM, possibly OS, and definitely monitor (more to the point, the resolution(s) you'd most likely be wanting to run things at). Oh, and any other games / graphical apps you might be thinking about running.

edit2: Just in case it's troublesome to answer the above, or you simply don't want to for whatever reason, I'd recommend the GTS450 - like say, this one (under $100, after mail-in rebate, mind you). That's an excellent GPU for the money atm, provided your PC (particularly the PSU) can handle it, and can otherwise match it, or close enough. But yeah, you can't do better at that price point, that I've seen.

 

[tecnowraith]

Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.91ghz
Mainboard: M2N688-AM Plus
Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce 7025, nForce 630a
Memory: 2.00 GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
OS: Windows XP, soon to upgrade to 7
Monitor: Widescreen Dell

The mainboard, CPU and memory was recently upgraded this past August, on my birthday

 

[Thanee]

According to Tom's Hardware it is either the GeForce GTS 450 or the Radeon 5750 for slightly above $100 (but with DirectX 11 support), or one step below those the GeForce GTS 250 or the Radeon HD 4850, which are definitely within your price range (but only DirectX 10, which is good enough, though, tbh).

I'm assuming that "Widescreen Dell" is a 22" with 1680x1050 resolution?

Bye
Thanee