I'm a casual gamer. I bought this card for ~$65, the 256mb PCI version. My main interest in buying this card was to be able to run Half Life 2 with moderate settings without crashing. Unfortunately, this card was not able to do the trick. Half life 2 still crashes every 30-45 minutes or so, and it's not even set to the highest graphics options. The game plays well enough, without choppiness, but all of a sudden, it just crashes and I have to hard reset my system. Boo. I wouldn't recommend it for any of today's higher end games.
On the flip side, the card has significantly increased my ability to edit and burn movies on DVD with reasonable speed. Although, I did add some RAM to my system along with the card, so I'm not sure if it's that, or the card.
Overall, you get what you pay for. Will help improve your system's graphics capabilities by about 30-35%. That's it.