I currently have a GeForce FX 5900XT graphics card... its 256bit, 128MB DDR... My questions are... what does that mean? What will a 256MB DDR do for me? Whats the difference between a 5900 and a 6600? Whats the FX? the XT? Can anyone link me to a performance chart of various cards? I'm looking to upgrade, and no idea whats good. Please, can someone give me some terms I can understand about the specs of cards... and perhaps even some helpful advice?

thats an easy one :-) go to www.tomshardware.com and you can find out any statistic about any electronic just about. go check it out..its always been my refrence source.

"to be a rebel in veiw of contemporary society does not in itself lower the value of a man, but instead he awakens us to something wich war ought to be waged against"

much thanks :-)

256-bit = how large the data path is to the memory = better bandwidth

128M = amount of video memory textures can be stored without having to use slower system memory = better quality graphics and speed increase provided your video card's CPU can keep up processing which textures need to be viewable

"Whats the difference between a 5900 and a 6600?"

It's like jumping from a Pentium 3 to a Pentium 4. They're Graphics Processing Units. The specific differences between those two in particular you can look up.

"Can anyone link me to a performance chart of various cards?"

www.tomshardware.com

Look for the Graphics cards charts.

"and perhaps even some helpful advice?"

Don't pay the slightest bit of attention to the amound of video RAM a card has unless the RAM is equally as fast, with the same datapath (the bit number), and the GPU is powerful enough to process the increased amount of textures stored in the video RAM. Adding additional slower video RAM is the cheapest thing a manufacturer can do to make their graphics card appear better on paper than it really is.

"Christmas and the New Year are actually two holidays.... I suppose you could say 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy New Year,' but you probably have sh!t to do." --Jon Stewart, on saying "Happy Holidays"

That's a great answer heropsycho gave above. With regard to the reference by others about TomsHardware.com -- click on the 02 Dec link for PCI-Express graphics cards. I know you are not looking at PCI-Express, however, there is an incredibly handy percentage spreadsheet near the end of the multi-page report. That spreadsheet provides some great comparative performance increases in terms of percentage.

I forgot to add that you should seriously look at the 6600 GT variation if you are looking at the 6600 GPU.