.....but I'm really hooked on Need for Speed 2 and GTA SA. I've been playing on an old P3 with a cheap Nvidia card but I'm getting tired with the general sluggishness of it so I'm now going to swap this machine with my server box (Athlon XP 3200, Asus NF7-S Mobo, 512MB Corsair Dual Channel DDR400) and use that for gaming. The only thing is the graphics card in the server is an ancient ATI Rage128 so it obviously needs chucking. The Mobo supports AGP 8x so I should still be able to get something reasonably competent, I'm not willing to spend oodles of cash on one, but more than £30 (what I paid for the nvidia). I haven't a clue about price/performance so should I go for an ATI or an Nvidia card?

The machine will have to run linux as well as XP so linux drivers are a must, does this really mean Nvidia is the only real choice, the only other requirement would be a DVI connector for my next purchase. If I'm going to play games as well as other more boring activities would it make sense to have two XP partitions? One for games and one for everything else. Also, the box has a Tagan 500W quiet power supply, if the new graphics card has a power connector can I just connect a normal molex to it or should I up the PSU to one with a VGA-specific plug on it?

I never used to be interested in games but some of the stuff coming out now is unbelievable.