Needing some help on getting a graphics card

[jimmyo]

Hey everyone. I just bought a desktop computer and I'm wanting to upgrade it some. Here's some of its specs...

Emachines T6410
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor
160GB Hard Drive
DVD+/-RW Drive
512MB RAM
ATI Radeon Express 200
ATI RS480 Chipset
1 PCI Express slot

I'm wanting to play a lot of todays games on it (like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, ect.) I know that 512MB of RAM won't cut it, so I'm going to upgrade that to at least 1GB. But I'm looking for a graphics card that's preferably under $150. Any ideas or tips is appreciated!

[poppy]

Check out saphalline's (the resident hardware guru) sticky (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=39018) as your starting point for his recommended video cards. Then if need be post back any specific questions on any of those and I'm sure he'll respond with his usual sound advice.

[jimmyo]

Okay. I checked out that link and this Graphics card caught my eye.

ABIT Radeon X700PRO 128MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814123146

People said in the product reviews that they were able to run Half-life 2 seamlessly using this card. Do you all think that this would be a good choice for my computer, or would it even work? What would be this cards limits?

[hockey man]

You have a 300 watt psu in that baby, so you don't want to go to high powered. The x700 pro should work.