I am all about gaming on the cheap as much as the next guy. At this point in my life, I have all but given up on trying to keep my system up to a ‘gamer’s level’ anymore. I mean seriously folks, it just gets too expensive.

Well, perhaps Vid-Cards like this will help to offset some of that seemingly neverending cost that just keeps mounting. Enter the AOpen Aeolus 6600GT video card. While it remains a bit shy on memory, it is still not a bad card for the money.

Despite having only 128MB of memory, AOpen’s card, based on the nVidia 6600GT graphics processor, performs very respectably in all our speed tests. The software bundle is decent, but the two games aren’t exactly topping the charts. Gamers who like roleplaying games and haven’t tried these titles may appreciate them, though. We like the HDTV dongle with component outputs.

This is a really good value for $200. A few games that use a lot of texture RAM, like some massively multiplayer online games, may run into a few performance problems with this 128MB card, but for the most part, it’s a lot of bang for the buck.