Hello:
the Nvidia FX 5xxx series mainly has a slow pixel fill rate, Nvidia specs the "value" (ie cheap) line FX at 81 Mpixels/sec
http://www.nvidia.com/page/fx_desktop.html
This would seem acceptable enough to play but actually its a slow figure compared to other cards, especially if they need to perform a lot of other calculations in parallel, as in EQ 2.
Another poster stated the Radeon 9600 didn't work out well, and on research I noticed that the 9600 could be the 9600SE (SE Special Edition, whats special is its 64 bit memory access, which means the card is about $9 to $12 cheaper to manufacture), and in any case note the difference in the Hyper-Z III and Smart Shader 2.0 stats from
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9600/radeon9600pro/specs.html
Now compare to the improved value card ATI 9550
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9550/specs.html
Theyve improved both the 3D engine ("Hyper Z III") capabilities and expanded the number of conccurrent instructions able to be executed by Smart Shader 2.0; in my country a Asus ATI 9550GE/TD with 256 MB DDR sells for best price $88 USD; it looks to be the best bet for true 9.0c support.
Notice the ATI 9250 series absolutely doesnt support DirectX 9.0c; it lists DX 8.1 support and for the $20 USD lower price its just not worth the money. My opinion, but I know what I look for, as a junior engineer.
I was looking at the under-$100 video cards, having noted that many people were having issues, and admitting my old 64 MB DDR GForce 4200-TI had too many problems on my minimal system (I have 3 to 5 computers I use, depending on how you count them). I must say I find 128 MB the minimum acceptable video; too much time paging textures in and out even with the performance set to extreme and manually turning off every feature I could find.
Bottom line: now that I am buying another video card, I'm spending the extra $19 USD to get 256 MB DDR video RAM instead of 128 MB, since video cards don't have incremental memory upgrades (no slots for video RAM DIMMs), and so might as well go 256 MB if I have to spend $70 anyway, now spending $90.
The game still runs well on my Nvidia Gforce 4200-TI AGPx4 128 MB DDR; for that PC all I need is more RAM on the motherboard, which looks to cost $42 to $51 per 512 MB module. Since the range in cost is so narrow, I'd recommend getting Kingston, Siemens, Samsung, or Toshiba RAM in the $50 range; the PQI, Hyundai, or no-name memory is good around $45. Try to get your PC store clerk to hold the memory only by the edges, so as to not static damage the memory. And good luck.
retired after 21 years as Tech support -- seen them come and go, still puttering with my 'puter.