Video Card Dilemma

Alright, here's the situation....I bought a radeon 9600XT to go with my prescott 3.2 P4, 512 ddr3200 ram, 160 GB hd, 430W true power antec, etc., thinking it would be plenty good enough for what I wanted to play (sims 2, doom 3, halflife 2, etc.) However, in doom3, I get random freezes all the time, even with new drivers. All other games work fine.

So, i decided to try a low end nvida card (fx5500) at Best Buy to see if that might switch things up, and doom 3 worked on it fine, albeit a little slow. So, should I stick with the low-end crapper because it works (it was about $100, I could get it online for about $50), stick with the 9600xt (got for $150) and say screw doom 3, or go with something else along the lines of the 9800pro (about $150)? I'm looking at about $150 max....any advice?

If you can get a 9800pro for $150, absolutely do it. Its by far the best card you can get in that price range, and will run Doom 3 great. (I know b/c I have one)

thanks for the advice....i think thats what I will do. Is there any major difference between the brands, ie Sapphire, PowerColor, etc....the $150 one is a powercolor EZ (128 bit instead of 256), will this suffice? Or would a refurbished sapphire 256bit, at about $155 from newegg, be better (are the refurbs trustworthy)? Thanks again.

I have a sapphire 128mb 9800pro, and it works fine. More video memory is nice, but not all that necessary. Refurbs should be fine too, make sure there is a warranty though.

what about a 128b BIT (like the powercolor EZ) against a 256 BIT? The price diff is about 50 bucks...worth the money?