Just swipe one from a school machine. That's all I ever did. Then later they basically put me in charge of repairs, so it was like stealing candy from someone who doesn't really care about their candy.
The 9600XT is a very nice card. It's what I'm running right now and it's probably the best card in its price range. I'm running Doom III @ 1024x768, medium detail, with a good frame-rate, and it handled the Half Life 2 demo with default settings pretty well.
Many people don't care about metaphorical candy, because it doesn't really exist. Thus stealing it isn't too hard.
I got a Radeon 9600 last week because it had no fan on it and any XT was twice the price, but I can play America's Army flawless on high detail at 1024x768. Check my mad clockzz dudez!
I think it's annoying that you can get graphics cards in America for half the price than you get them here, though
Edit: my mad clocks are BURNING n thats why teh picture was bubbling - cos the memory's so hot! u no dats tru
I swiped a nice Geforce 4 MX-4000 from a local store that sold me the last one. Costs RM135 (about $40 +). Dunno how fast it should be, but it ran Empire Earth II demo at almost full speed on my old Pentium III.
Check out Ebay. Or your local computer store. And if in doubt, go for an Nvidia card... you get nice customer support, and a card that'll last quite a few years. And they're pretty cheap as they're mass-produced too.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Well my Geforce fx 5600 runs half life on maximum and 1047x768. I bet it's dirt cheap as well.
(i got the sucky 256mb version that comes with morrowind for £180 when it first came out)
Ive actually got a geforce 4 mx440 64mb that im not using. but its a bit sucky on newer games.