Question for you tech gurus...
I just looked up this card on Newegg and found a dozen+ versions of this card available from different manufactures. What differs one from the next?
Not specific to this card but in general things to look for are memory (amount... more is better), memory (type; DDR2/DDR3, etc. ... higher is better), clock speed (faster is better although you can overclock the card yourself) and pixel pipelines (more is better).
As to manufacturers, all things being equal, there may be differences in programs. For instance, I have an EVGA card. They offer a lifetime warranty and a 90 day step-up program where, if you find you want a different, higher priced card, you can send them the one you have and pay only the difference to "step up" to the one you want.
I'm not sure about the other manufacturers but on the EVGA site you can compare cards and they take all the individual component stats and wrap them up into a memory bandwidth stat that's probably the most telling as to the cards actual performance.
Down the road, PCIe x16 1.0 vs 2.0 will likely be an imprtant factor also, although I don't think any of the current cards take full advantage of the PCIe 2.0 bandwith yet (double that of 1.0).
BTW, the 8800 GT, now at under $200 is a steal. You'd probably be very happy with it.
