8600GT Crapped out

The best card for $150 is the Radeon HD4870. However, if you can sneak past your budget up to around $170, get the radeon HD4890. 'Tis a great card.

4870 is a great choice, would be a major improvement over your 8600gt.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=E...

Thank you... Will the 4870 be okay with a crappy 305 watt PS? Sorry for the newbie questions.

A 300 watt PSU wouldn't suffice. Especially a OEM PSU which I'm assuming you have.

What are your system specs (CPU/RAM)? If it was a prebuilt PC, what is the brand/Model? Gateway, dell, HP, etc...

For the 4870 I recommend a 450 Watt MINIMUM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... ($50 MIR)

500W+ would be preferable:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... ($59.99)

get the geforce 9800 low power for 95 bucks. Save almost 50 percent than ATI card and you don't need any extra power connectors. If you had a strong enough cpu , yes the ati is a little faster, but for reference this card is almost 2x fast as your 8600.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

+1 for the 9800, big upgrade and it'll run on your (Dell?) PSU with no problems at all, none.

Far better option would be the HD4770 which uses less power than the GF9800GT (which uses about the same as a 4830) so no worries about the PSU, and it outperforms the 9800 also.

Wouldn't bother with a 9800 series card at this point in time, aging and under-powered.