Best Low-End Video Cards Under $100: Published April 2009

When ATI released the Radeon 4850, the race was on. With that card, ATI emerged as a company suddenly capable of challenging the long-dominating Nvidia, which had grown comfortable with its standing as the top maker of video cards. The result has been a price war between ATI and Nvidia as each seeks to undercut the other and earn a reputation for providing great bang for your buck. Prices for graphics hardware have nose-dived, making it possible to buy good video cards for less than $100. At the same time, the graphical needs of games have slowed their growth, meaning that not all new games require cutting-edge hardware to play.

As a result, it is a good time to be a buyer. It is now easy to buy a video card that will play all but the most demanding games for less than $100, and the three cards below are perfect examples of budget video cards.

In a world of monstrous high-end graphics cards with massive fans and heatsinks the size of your hand, the Radeon HD 4550 looks a bit of a wimp. Many incarnations of this card are "low-profile" cards, which simply means they are about half as wide as a normal video card. Many versions of the Radeon HD 4550 are also passively cooled, meaning that no fans are included. Compared to something like a Radeon 4870, it is clear that the 4550 is a budget card aimed at the entry level market.

But the Radeon HD 4550 has adequate performance, and considering that its price hovers around $50 - the price of a new PC game - there is nothing wrong with that. No mistakes should be made, as the low price also means performance that is never outstanding. But the framerates that can be squeezed out of this little card are enough to make games like Dawn Of War, Half-Life 2, and World Of Warcraft playable on monitors of 19 inches or smaller. If you're not a hardcore gamer, and you have no real interest in playing games like Crysis with all the bells and whistles turned on, then this card fits the bill.

The Radeon HD 4550 is also a praise-worthy HTPC card, capable of running high-def video without dropping frames, and the combination of passive cooling and small size makes this card among the easiest to install. If you have a pre-built machine with integrated graphics, then this card is a particularly good choice, as its low power draw makes it unlikely that the card will demand more from your power supply than it can give.