I am on a budget making a new computer and I am looking for a cheap but good performing Graphic Card.

First of all let me tell you what I am thinking of getting so far:

Motherboard - ASUS A8V DELUXE
Processor - AMD 64 (3000+)
Sound Card - Audigy 2ZS
RAM - Undecided
XP Pro

What do people think of that set up?

Anyway back to the graphic card I am not a huge gamer but would like to play the latest games that take my fancy example Sims 2, Doom 3, and Half Life 2. I do alot of video and photo editing its part of my job so anything that helps with that would be a bonus too.

Here are some of the budget cards I found so far but I have no clue which one is faster/better can you help?

Graphic Cards:

Geforce 6600GT 128Mb
Asus Geforce 5700 256Mb
Radeon 9600XT 258MB
Radeon 9500 PRO

Some say the GeForce 6600GT 128Mb is the best buy but the others are 256/8MB so how can it be better if its less MB?

6600gt.
I cant be bothered to justify my reason,

Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb/ 4.12
AMD Barton 2800 @ 2.3ghz
Asus A7N8X E-Deluxe
512 DDRAM PC2700 @ 360mhz

I'd say you're serious or "huge" gamer if you're going to play those kind of games, but whatever. The GeForce FX 5700 is the least expensive out of the lot(I bought a 5700LE 256MB for ~$95). There's the LE or the Ultra. I've heard the LE means it's lower performance, but I'm not sure- it works OK for me. I like nVidia cards so I'm gonna recommend them.
I don't believe that less ram is better- the more video ram you have, the more and better quality textures you can have in your games. It also means that graphical data (like textures, etc.) can remain on the video card's ram and not spill over into system ram or even worse, the hard drive's swap file or cache, slowing the game down. Whoever said that...puzzles me.

Each of the 4 cards have their own strengths and weaknesses so it kinda depends on what you're doing. You'll want a faster card if you're gonna do gaming, but if you plan on doing a lot of handling of several high quality images at once or doing heavy-duty video editing, having a surplus of vram may be a plus. But I'm not a be-all and end-all on this matter, so listen to others and take your time deciding.

i'd go with the 6600 gt. i've got a 9800 pro, and the 6600gt my friend has kicks it's ass. and for the price, it's a lot better.

if you're on a budget system, i'd rethink the audigy 2z. its a good sound card, but it might be more worth while to use onboard, and get more ram or something, or maybe even a 6800.

you could go for a 256 if the price difference isn't too high, as it would be future proofing in a way. but i'm not sure what the margin is right now.

2.8c 800mhz fsb
1 gb 512x2 geil dual channel
asus p4p800 se
60 gb ibm 7200 rpm
80 gb maxtor 7200
thermaltake va3000
sapphire 9800 pro 128mb

Try to go with a Socket 939 version Athlon 64 for better upgradeability, which it looks like you are. NForce 3 and 4 based motherboards do outperform Via chipset motherboards like the one you selected, but I'm not sure if your board has features you need the NForce3 or 4 boards don't.

As for amount of RAM on the video card, the 6600GT does have enough horsepower to benefit from 256M RAM. Depends on how much more money you're talking.

Sometimes cards with less RAM can be actually better because some manufacturers will use lower speed RAM on them. Pay attention tocvore and RAM clock speeds when buying a card.

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

Absolutely psycho, they can lure you into buying their card by showing off a huge memory capacity, but somewhat hide(like fine print almost)the speed of the ram and clock speed. Gee, come to think of it, that's what happened to me. What a chump I am.

Also important is the amount of bits in the datapath. You can have a lot of RAM, have it clocked high, but if the card has 4 pipes, it's still gonna suck. ;-)

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

I tried playing DOOM3 with my old GF4 MX440 64MB 4X AGP card & I was surprised that the game is quite playable on the lowest settings. No probs with lagging or lockups - it just played! There's no doubt it wasn't as "pretty" as an expensive card, but I don't understand how some people can't get these games to play well with high end cards. When I see posts with people complaining about their 9800 Pro not being acceptable, I just don't get it. Is it because you insist on going with the highest settings?

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz
512MB PC3200
Asus Ti4800SE 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro

What's the point of playing Doom 3 without all the eye candy? It's not like there's much else to the game but the gfx...

Oops, I've said too much! ;-)

The 9800 is a fine card, that's what I have. I'm with you, Jam, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I can play Doom 3 @ 1024x768 with everything on but anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on, which in Doom 3 neither makes a whole lot of difference. Frame rates are fluid.

With that said, I do understand spending a little more than the asking price for a 9800 Pro these days only because for a few dollars more, a 6600GT has a significant edge over it.

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

Integrated sound can sometimes be better than an add-in card. It does rely on the chipset, making its performance lower by just a just a tiny sliver (hardly noticable). For example, I had an add-in PCI Crystal Sound card that was 32bit(an improvement over my SoundBlaster16, I thought), but it didn't have hardware acceleration. Now my nForce2 chipset has integrated sound, complete with hardware acceleration and Creative's EAX2.0, yeah. It rocks. But I've never heard sound on an Audigy, but EAX is realistic enough for me. I mean, the Crystal card didn't even have surround sound! Talk about sucky.