Cheap-ish video card recommendation

[david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org (David Kramer)]

Dan Ritter wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 03:11:09PM -0500, David Kramer wrote:
>> I recently built a mythtv front end whose video card (random card from
>> my basement) isn't cutting it.  I can't get 3D/acceleration or
>> widescreen working with it, and it's hooked up to the PC port of my
>> livingroom TV.
>>
>> The motherboard is old enough that it takes AGP 8X, which is a little
>> harder to find these days (everything's PCIe).  The only ones I've found
>> around are ATI, and I've had compat problems with ATI's lately,
>> especially since xorg has been removing older drivers from the distro,
>> and the proprietary driver won't work with the ATI card in there now.
>> Because of that, I'm leaning towards nvidia, but if you know for a fact
>> that an ATI card is supported with the proprietary driver, I'm willing
>> to listen.
>>
>> Again, this doesn't have to be anything fancy, since I'm not doing
>> gaming on it.  I would even consider a used one.
> 
> For an AGP motherboard and MythTV, you want either an NVideo
> 5200 or a PCI 8400. The first can do XvMC, and the second can do
> VDPAU. The 5200 will be cheaper; you can get a fanless one from
> NewEgg for about $30.

Hmm.  My schedule for tomorrow has changed and I can sneak out to 
Microcenter.  They don't appear to have a PCI 8400 card, though that 
would have been cool (never knew what VDPAU was until a few minutes ago).

The one thing I'm fuzzy on, and am finding conflicting information on, 
is Linux with different OpenGL versions and DirectX versions.  I take it 
that DirectX isn't used by Linux programs, and even if I set it up as 
dual boot that DirectX 9 would be fine.

I see cards that support OpenGL 1.4, 2.0, and "ICD".  It looks like ICD 
works with Linux (never heard of ICD before either), but would 1.4 work? 
  I see some references to Linux being behind on OpenGL releases anyway.

Thanks.