Video Card Recommendations Appreciated

[Enslaved001]

Hey guys I just registered to the forums and I have been searching the internet a lot today trying to figure out what would be the best video card to buy since I've been looking at buying one soon. I wanted some advice from just regular people. I've seen so many opinions so far, but none of them have to do with what I have, and I don't want to really ask the person I am buying it from. I also have a bit of a budget. I'm willing to spend maybe around $150 at the moment. But yea..

I'm not very technical when it comes to computers, I wish I was, but I'm just not :p

I can post my specs to the best of my knowledge:

-XFX nforce 680i LT SLI motherboard
-EVGA Geforce 8600 LT video card
-Intel Core Duo 6600 @ 2.40 ghz (have heard about overclocking but not really sure how to do it) processor
-4gb mushkin RAM
-Enermax Noisetaker 2 powersupply (600W)
-320gb Hard Drive

Don't know if you need any more information, but as I've been reading and reading, some things still haven't really sunk in. Like, I know my motherboard has a PCI-E 16x slot, and I've read I can put in a video card that is PCI-E 2.0 (not sure about 16x as well, just noticed that a while ago), but it will make a difference right? That's the big one I've had a bit of trouble figuring out. Also, I've read that ATI makes better cards for a better price then Nvidia.. so I guess I may sort of be looking at an ATI..

But really I'd like your guy's input. I'm a heavy gamer, been playing counter-strike all my life and that doesn't need a very good system really. I just recently bought Fallout 3. It works fairly good, but it still seems a little slow still, a little choppy. Also I got GTA 4, I can run it okay at low settings, but it still doesn't run very well.

Thanks for any advice! :)

[123456]

GTA4 runs horrible on most PC's, even quad cores. It's not optimized well at all. Google around GTA4 performance - you'll be shocked. I returned my copy.

You should look at a 1GB GTS250. They're around $150 or so.

[Enslaved001]

Sorry I think I may have to lower my budget to closer to $100

[Enslaved001]

I also googled GTA 4 performance a lot. So many people said it wouldn't work with quad cores, and there were others that said it worked great with a dual core. Confusing.. D: