no real budget as such. just looking for a card that will make the system workable for at least a year (being optimistic). saw real time how fast a 64MB top Nvidia card was out for being a BAD BOY to a wimpy. 6800 series and the 6600 ones you mentioned are the AGP slot ones right? here in b'lore, even in some of the "renowned" stores, dopes dont know what a PCI express and a AGP card look like and simply say "give us a model and we'll look for it". end of day.... same deal again.
have seen 6800 series in PCI format as well in DIGIT mag a couple of times so was not too sure.
the current one i got gives real low scores on any pc performace stats. the system tops almost all units in the AMD 3000+ series but falls flat in every single 2D and 3D graphics tests by more than 100 or in some 300 points! and the GPU is overclocked to add a bit of performance and all background apps are shutoff as well.
so there....
games used are KOTOR 2, Republic Commando, DOOM 3, NFS UNDG 2 and D3 requires me to shut down all the background apps to even get min res to run or risk seein the bullet hit the Ghouls in real time slo-mo matrix style. KOTOR 2 runs only if card is overclocked and i run it only for an hour before heat becomes issue as well