Looking for best PCI 54Mbps card ($50 or less)

I am in the midst of building a new gaming rig, but I am limited to wireless (for reasons I cannot control). Currently on my laptop (see sig) I have integrated Intel wireless and experience no lag spikes while playing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (old game, yeah I know, but I've got GMA900 graphics so it's all I can do).

I am looking for a PCI wireless card (54Mbps) to put in my new system, but on many of the cards I see with reviews, I see "not good for gaming", or "lag spikes", etc. I know there has to be a decent card out there that is good for gaming. I will be picking up signal from my roommate's Belkin F5D7230-4 (cheap, but it works well and rarely drops connections, to my suprise).

Thanks for any help!

Limit is $50!

Can't help you other then by sharing my experience.

I've found a good starting point is selecting by chipset. This can be hard since the manufacturers keep changing the chipset's within revisions, but if you can make sure you are getting the right product it should work.

Last time I looked Ralink was used by alot of manufacturers, and they also provided their own reference drivers. Have a look on their forums, if people seem happy with whatever they are selling, get something compatible with their reference driver. That way if the company branding the product is lazy with driver updates, you just get the newest one from Ralink directly.

http://www.ralinktech.com/

Look for Asus cards. Many of them use the Ralink RT2500 chipset, which is damn good, and also supported in Linux if you ever feel the urge for some Gentoo

The Prism A/B/G chipset (forget the name of it, might be PrismGT?) is also very good.

Consider a wireless bridge? E.g. Linksys WRT54GL / Buffalo WHR-G54S with DD-WRT running in "client bridge" mode.

Pros: Not very expensive, greater flexibility in feature set, driver-free (but need standard ethernet support), possibly better radio performance, and probably better placement flexibility, option to connect more than one device to single wireless connection.

Cons: Installation of third-party firmware can be tricky. Bigger desktop and power supply footprint.