wk> so, with all that said, can you give me a few recommendations, please?

NewEgg.com is a *great* place to search for video cards because of their
excellent video card search parameters.  I recommend finding out what the best
slot is available on the motherboard (or what he has now), then go to NewEgg
and filter by things like:

1. Motherboard slot
2. Nvidia (better driver compatibility than ATI/AMD)
3. Highest DirectX version
4. Sort by lowest price first

You can even drill down into the types of output ports, memory type, customer
ratings, price ranges, etc.  I bet you can get a basic video card from $10-50
that will cover the basics.

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