video card recommendation ? - UPDATE

[Bill Walton]

Greetings,

Thanks to all who replied.  And especially to Alan Pope for the
instructions that proved very helpful in investigating further.  I
still don't know what's going on, but I do have more info that may
help you help me.

When booting to the Live CD I'm getting a dialog that says:

<dialog box>
Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode

The following error was encountered.  You may need
to update your configuration to solve this.

(EE) [drm] KMS not enabled
(EE) Screen(s) found but none have a usable configuration.
</dialog box>

Clicking the OK button takes me to another dialog.

<dialog>
What would you like to do?
<radio buttons>
Run Ubuntu in low-graphics mode for just one session
Reconfigure graphics
Troubleshoot the error
Exit to console login
Restart X
</radio buttons>
</dialog>

My first step was to 'Exit to console login' and run lscpi as
instructed.  I saw Nvidia for video but didn't write down the details,
dammit.

Exit / Reboot.

Back to the dialog above.

The 'Reconfigure graphics' option takes me to another dialog that
basically won't let me do anything.  Cancel.

The 'Troubleshoot the error' option lets me 'Review the server log'
which is pretty lengthy but contains the errors displayed in the first
dialog.

So I select 'Run Ubuntu in low-graphics mode for just one session'.
Then go in to synaptics package manager and select some likely looking
nvidia packages (based on what I see in my 8.04 LTS installed package
list).  I chose:

nvidia-kernel-common
nvidia-settings
nvidia-current

nvidia-current requires the following:
dkms
fakeroot
patch

Applied the packages, removed Live CD, and rebooted.  I get a brief,
partial screen, Ubuntu splash panel, then black.  Won't even boot to
Live CD now.  HELP!

TIA,
Bill