Video Card and Motherboard/Chip Recommendations?

[Richard S. Crawford]

Long story short, my wife and I just got a financial windfall, so I've decided 
that it's finally time to upgrade my old desktop.  In that computer, my hard 
drives are just fine, the power supply is relatively new, the network card 
and sound card are adequate for my purposes, and I have a spiffy new DVD/CD 
RW drive that I got just a year ago.  So I don't want to invest in a whole 
new computer.  All I need is a new graphics card and a new motherboard.  I'm 
not a hardware kind of guy, so I need some help in making some choices.

Requirements:

The graphics card be powerful enough to handle Compiz/Fusion (I want my wobbly 
windows!) plus some light gaming (nothing more exceptional than Second Life, 
really).  I'm not above using proprietary drivers if I have to.  I have a 
brand new 22 inch widescreen LCD monitor with a 2ms refresh rate, so the card 
needs to be able to handle that (I can't think of any that wouldn't but you 
never know).

The motherboard must be capable of handling IDE drives.  I looked at a few at 
Fry's last night that didn't have IDE controllers built in.

So I'm wide open to suggestions.  Anyone got any?


-- 
Richard S. Crawford
Editor-in-chief, Daikaijuzine (http://www.daikaijuzine.com)
Personal website: http://www.mossroot.com
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