Cheap gaming card

I bought the eVGA GeForce 8600gt about 6 months ago, and the prices have continued to plummet on this card. I made the upgrade about the same time that I switched to a dual-core processor and upgraded to 2 gigabytes of RAM memory.

For medium-duty gaming, the card holds its own. I play mostly first person shooters, such as Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and the like. Also played are Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Jade Empire, and Crash-Out. For this wide variety of games, spanning a variety of genres, the card has been fantastic. I run most games on full settings at 1440x900 without a hiccup. Anti-aliasing, unfortunately, must usually be turned off. None of the 8-series of GeForce cards do that great with anti-aliasing.

I also use the card for light-duty video editing using Sony Vegas. Making the jump from a 6600gt to this card has obviously led to quite the leap in performance, and decrease in times to view renderings. There have been no problems using this for editing, however, I would obviously suggest a higher-end card with more RAM on it if this was to be your primary use.

Movies (played through both DVD and various file-types) play fine, though any card shouldn't struggle with this sort of thing anymore. I've tested the s-video and the component video output to a TV and it worked well- allowing me to watch movies on my television rather than my TV monitor.

The card also supports dual-monitors, which is great for when you video editing, having one screen for previewing and the other with the timeline.

Finally, the card has worked well in both Windows XP and Linux (Ubuntu Feisty, Gutsy, and Hardy) with stable drivers that are well-maintained by Nvidia.

If you find the card at a steal, I'd recommend it. It's a great card and it serves its purpose well, including moderate gaming. However, if you can spring for an 8800gt, I'd really recommend making the leap- it's worth the extra money.