Video Card
 

is this thing any good? ATi Radeon X600 SE

it's better than my old Radeon 9700 Pro since it supports the 2.0 Shaders. however, in today's standards, that card leans toward the low end side of what's available. if you want my recommendation, get the GeForce 6600 GT or higher. at least those cards support the 3.0 Shaders and have good enough speed to get you through about one to two years before its outdated if you plan on using Windows XP or Linux. if you upgrade to Vista, that card will be outdated since it won't be DirectX 10 compatible.

hope that helps. ;)

i just got the 7600 256 nvidia its great i recommend it and its a good price 250$

Any card you get right now won't be the greatest since even the nvidia 7900 and ATi X1900 cards do not support DX10.

No cards do because it's not out yet. Hopefully the high-end nVidia and ATi cards will be DX10 compitable though, but since DX10 is still in development it's not clear as to whether or not they'll be able to run DX10 applications.

DX10 is also an overhyped MicroShaft creation, which will in no way pull of what it claims.

A good card for the price is the X1600XT, preferably by PowerColor. Nvidia cards are power hogs and overheat too much, but if you've got the cooling they are, generally, a tad bit cheaper, albeit you get what wou pay for with lower quality.

The X600 is definitely low-end, but still a fairly good card.

DX 10 isnt over hyped look at FS X theres so much detail its amazing its with out a doubt the best game to release DX10 with

Bull. You won't see developers take full advantage of DX10 for a little while, but it's one of the biggest upgrades to the DirectX API yet. That, and better integration with the OS (Vista), will let DX10 live up to the hype.

And PowerColor isn't all that great, it's one of mid-range manufacturers.