Im looking at building a new computer from the ground up, and I'd be stupid if I bought an AGP card, but I dont know much about the current PCI-E cards. My video card currently is a Radeon 9700 pro, and I want to see a good diffrence between my current card and my card-to-be. Im a gamer and a graphics designer, so I need a decent card. I want to be able to play Half-Life 2, really, really well. And since I work with 100 megabyte files+ in photoshop, I need a card that can keep up with my high end memory Im getting. I dont want to spend a lot, on this card, maybe 250 at the most, which is kind of crazy. So if I could get a good PCI-E card for about that much, I'd like to know what I need to be getting. I also dont want anything nVidia. Anything ATi in that pricerange will do, thanks for the help.
not going anything nvidia will really bring you down in performance over money. nvidia's line is much better than ati's. EDIT-didn't see pricerange
Well, given your spending limits and who you want to buy, the X700 Pro is basically your only option. PCIe is also the only format the X700's come in last I checked, so you'll need a new motherboard to support it if your current one doesn't have the appropriate slot.
