GPU suggestions

hi,

Recently been looking into various new graphics cards that are on the market, but i'm having trouble in deciding what the best card is for the budget ive got, in terms of performance and quality. I'm looking to spend upto £250, not really any more than that.
I was previously running an ATI Radion 9700PRO, which all of a sudden gave me red and purple lines down my screen, i spoke to some people and they advised that it needed replaceing. So, with no inspiration to buy a new card i pulled out my old Geforce 2 from an old PC and shoved that in, with some heavy tweaking ive managed to run some of the less demanding games quite smoothly, namely CoD1. But with many new games on the horizon its time to look into a new card.

I've been looking mostly at the 6600GT 128 or 256MB as this is well in my price range and i've heard nothing but good things about it.
Second is the 6800GT, but with my MOBO only supporting AGP, the price of the 6800GT AGP cards are more money than i would like to spend - is it better to get a 6800, or a 6600GT? -
Then onto the Sapphire ATI Radion X800 XL 256MB, which ive spotted for £211 - supposably a nice card, but havn't heard much about it.

Can anyone give any suggestions as to which card, within my price range, will deliver most performance? not necessarily out of the cards above, but any card currently on the market. Also, what are the major advantages of having a 256MB card over a 128MB, is there any significant increase in performance that i should considder when buying my card?

Thanks.

£250 will get you a nice AGP card. That ATI x800 XL will be ok, but I would choose a Nvidia SM3.0 card, just so you got some future-proofability... Maybe the 6800 AGP variants are what you need.

x800xl is a good card and to be honest not many games right now run sm3 so you shouldnt be too worried about it. But if you do want a card with sm3 then theres this OCUK brand 6800gt for £258 including vat, which is only £8 over budget. But you also have to include shipping which I think is something like £8. Heres the link. Both are great cards. Also if you look on ebay Im sure you could pick up these cards even cheaper.

Forgot to mention that theres not really much point in getting a 6600gt as they are pretty crappy, about the same power as a 9800pro which isnt much to run todays latest games with decent frame rates (e.g. doom3, fear, quake 4, dod source, call of duty 2). Also its necessary to have 256mb for all of the latest games as 128 doesnt cut it anymore. Hope all this has answered your questions, if you have anymore just ask.

when looking at the 6800GT 256mb the core speed is 350MHz, compared to the 400Mhz on the x800xl (also found on OCUK), again, what significance does the corespeed add to the card in terms of performance and FPS?

thanks in advance.

Well all though the core speed of the 6800gt is lower than the x800xl they are pretty much on par with each other. They get roughly the same 3d mark 05 score. The only significant difference is with hl2 and doom3 (where the x800xl is king with hl2 and the 6800gt is king with doom3). The only major difference between the two is that the 6800 has sm3 whilst the x800 doesnt, but the x800 is also cheaper. Heres a comparison chart that has both the graphics cards in it (link). It shows how both perform. Hope this helps.

x800xl, there is no point for a sm3 card right now since no games are really using it...get that for now and wait til dx10 comes out. Then you can upgrade, or get the 6600gt and still wait til the dx10 comes out.