I recently got an Ati Radeon 9600 XT from a friend and I bought hlife 2. I can only play it with most of the settings on low so it won't slow down. My question is there a better card in the price range of 125-175$ or is there any safe tweaking or can I safely overclock(wich I've never done) the 9600 xt so I can get better performance until I can afford a highend card. Any links or tips to overclocking or tweaking cards would be appreciated. Pentium 4 3.4 ghz ECS 848p-a mobo ATI Radeon 9600xt 1gb Crucial pc3200 80 gig Hard Drive
Ninja's right, the 6600 series is a very good value, though the 6600GT agp version won't be in that price range. Overclocking won't get you anymore than about 10% higher fps in HL2, you can still try it with powerstrip if you want, just move the sliders up a few notches, restart to test for stability, than edge it up a few more notches and repeat. Don't push it too hard, 100MHz is probably as far as I'd recommend for the core and memory but this isn't my field.
