i was wondering waht could be the best pci express graphics card i could get for around 100 dollars and would be halfway up to standards for 2-3 years

to be honest i put my 6800 ultra pci express up against a 6800 ultra agp and found visually there was very little or no differencebut the 6600 series are a pretty good good card

check newegg...the best you can do for about $100 is a Radeon X1600Pro or a Geforce 6600GT.

By "Half way standards" u mean mid-ranged then I highly doubt it. $100 can probably get you a Radeon X1300 or less. Maybe Radeon X700 or less. But they are almost guaranteed to be lower than mid end in 2-3 years. If you add maybe $60 more to the $100, you can probably get ureself a Sappire X1600 card Sapphire PC-A9RD480Adv Sapphire Radeon X850CF AMD Athlon 3700+ 2.63GHz 1024MB512x2DDR400 RAM 350W Acetech PSU 16A;12v 300w SPI PSU 18A;12v

Obviously not up on your card prices. 6600GT for $100: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814135185 X1600Pro for $97: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814142060

I'd take the Nvidia 6600GT. I may get some boos here, but IMO and from what I have seen nVidia just makes better mid-low range cards then ATI does at this moment. ATI high end cards vs nvidia's run neck and neck, but the mid-low range cards nvidia IMO wins. AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ OC 2.7ghz 2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200 Nvidia 7800GT SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0 Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

Yeah, A 6600GT will complement your 3000+/dual512 rig, but don't expect it to be halfway up to standards for 2-3 years though.