I personally prefer ATI cards... The ATI 9200 is generally about $100 (USD) at most stores in the US. Don't know about Canada though, although you could always order directly from ATI.
That card should be sufficient to get you into the shader realm.
If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
3.0 GHz Pentium 4 w/HT
1 Gig 400mhz DDR SDRAM
128mb NVidia GeForce FX 5200
