I am in the planning stages for my major move from agp to pci-e. One of the key components will be my video card. I long gave up trying to live on the cutting edge, but I still want something that will, for an affordable price, give me some use for the next few years.

Any suggestions on the current generatiosn of PCI-E cards?

There are a vast array of cards that are PCI-E and isn't so bad in price. What are features you are looking for? I can reference some good cards for you if you tell me things you are looking for.

Hmm... Probably looking for memory to handle a lot of textures, so 512 megs would be preferable, but I am guessing they are still on the pricey side. Basically looking for it to run top end MMORPGs...... so they need to be able to handle a lot of textures. I have no idea how many pipelines any of the new cards have, so I am not sure.

As of the current trend, I would say that on the NVidia side, to look at GeforceFX 6600 series; they are quite good, and are affordable; I can run magnificent games (such as Oblivion full details.) with it (granted that it's a 512MB and 2Gig of Ram)

If you look hard enough, even some 512MB video cards aren't THAT terrible in price. As Slashmire said, NVIDIA is a good choice for cards. The thing with 512MB cards is the the massive size the actual cards have. They have been known to steal another adjacent slot next to it because it's so big.

51MB cards aren't really mainstream yet, its the 256MB ones. The 512's are becoming popular fast and there are some people that have dual cards (2 x 256MB cards)

Remember, the video card isn't the only major factor that will determine the performance of your games/3D applications.

And if you like blowing off money for no reason, NVidia did release their 7950 with up to 1GB if used with two GPU