Recommended hardware

[jdr]

Ok, so I'm looking at putting a new box together. The one I'm using at the moment is alright, but I've got a friend looking to buy a used machine, and it would be the perfect time to build another one.

I was personally thinking something along AMD Athlon 64 X2 lines. At least 1 GB of RAM, decently sized hard drive, probably not SATA since the last I heard SATA support was still a bit sketchy. Everything else I can sort out, but my only question is graphics card related. Does anyone have a preferred graphics card that they've had alot of success with? I'm not planning on doing heavy graphics work, but I'd like something that can run compiz without hiccuping. Chipset wise I was thinking nVidia, since I believe they have open source drivers, but I can't quite decide between 128MB or more for compiz.

Any suggestions?

Edit: By chance could a mod move this to the Linux Hardware forum? I have no idea what I was thinking posting it in general.