I must have been confused about your prior post as something
made me read it as saying your present card did have TV-Out
but with the upgrade you also wanted TV-Out and some "other"
benefit.
One of the problems is your PSU may have been merely
adequate for the system as-is, many of the more powerful
video cards use a significant amount of power but even a
lower end card is going to use more power than the
integrated video does. Since TV-Out isn't demanding you
should choose a current generation, lowest end card from ATI
or nVidia, unless you need something in particular like HDMI
output (I assumed you wanted S-Video out for TV or ???).
Besides the TV-Out, you don't mention anything that would
make any particular level of card an improvement except that
by using a separate card instead of integrated video (any
card at all, even low end or very old) you relieve the
system from devoting a certain amount (128MB) and bandwidth
of system memory to the video, so the rest of the system
would gain a slight (might not be enough to notice in most
uses outside of gaming) performance boost, but for
windows/2D mode, there is nothing demanding enough of the
video itself to see much benefit.
It would be hard to find a modern video card that degraded
performance below that of the integrated video, but the
thing is that for 2D uses, the power of modern video cards
in processing is mostly wasted, their mostly going to have
gains in 3D gaming besides the other issue you are facing,
more features like TV-Out but even cheap cards support that
now.
I doubt it, you would get very little if any return on this
upgrade when it comes time to sell a used and aged system.
If it were a pretty new system and had a relatively high end
video card you might get 1/3rd to 2/3rd of the value of that
card back out at resale time but even this is doubtful at
auction, for used parts past the current generation. Video
cards just depreciate too much, especially what you're
wanting which is one power miserly enough that it might run
from your marginal 250W PSU.
If you don't want to spend much then how could it be worth
much adding to resale value of the system even in a perfect
world? Your requirements aren't hard to meet, you might
look around for some sale or rebate offers at your favorite
online vendors. I would avoid ebay for something like this
unless you feel like taking the risks, as video cards can
often be partially damaged then resold on ebay (unless
clearly claimed as new in box still).
I don't understand why you are having trouble finding one.
I suggest going to newegg.com and using their search
parameters on the left hand side of the page in the video
card category to choose AGP (I'm assuming your board
supports 4X/8X with the following link, if not backtrack and
choose 2X/4X),
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=
That's 121 hits, you should probably avoid the old FX5xxx
series (like FX5200, FX5500, etc) merely because they tended
to use more power, run slightly hotter. If you end up having
to replace the PSU to support a card, it will practically
double the cost.
Here's a Radeon 9250 if you only needed composite TV out,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121525
here's a Radeon 9550 with an attractive after-rebate price,
supporting S-Video and Composite TV-Out and at $23 after
rebate I can't feel it worthwhile to use ebay at all.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102458
the heatsink on the following might be "slightly" better,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131049
though with any of these passively cooled cards I recommend
that you leave the adjacent motherboard slot empty and leave
that empty slot's rear case bracket cover off, which will
cause more passive airflow over the card.
If your case cooling is very bad, you might think about
getting a card with a fan but that will increase noise
levels a bit, and these fans tend to have fairly short
lives, it might be a maintenance issue to replace it every
year or two.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103162
A reasonable alternative from nVidia might be one of their
6200 series.
If you're just itching to go with ebay instead, the best
value would be something older. You just don't need a
current generation card merely to support TV-Out, so long as
you note the specs displayed with item listing you can
discriminate them and the issue of it being slower at gaming
won't matter since you make no mention of that being
important. Too many cards over the years supported TV-Out
to begin listing them all, it's not as though any one has
enough merits you would ignore the others, since the whole
point of a risk on ebay would seem to be trying for the
cheapest thing possible, since as I linked above you can get
brand new cards for under $30. One suggestion would be that
in general if the card has a large heatsink with a fan, that
means it's producing more heat during operation and as such,
using more power from your PSU so again it could come closer
or exceed capacity and you'd have to replace the PSU.
