What kind of video card would you recommend for me?

I know that I need a new card, I am currently using an NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX (HEY, stop laughing!)
I know that I need a new card, but I don't know which one I should choose.
Also, I'm running XP on a custom build with 256 MGs of RAM (I'll be upgrading that soon as well) and a pentium 4 1.7 GHz.

The largest games that I play are The Sims, and of course the new one is supposed to be HUGE, so I want a video card that will allow me to play this game smoothly.
I also can't spend more than $200.00.

I would appreciate any opinions on this matter. Thanks a bunch.

With the money you've got to spend you'd probably be looking at nVidias Geforce Fx 5900XT or Ati's Radeon 9600XT, 128Mb in either version will more than do the job!

Check newegg.com. You can get a radeon 9700pro for $185 or a 9800pro for $210. Both are faster than the 5900xt or 9600xt.
However, any of these will more than suffice for "the sims". You will really want to up the ram before you get that.