My kids would like me to upgrade the card on their second PC. The “good” PC has a GTX 950 that costs $169 at the time (Oct. 2015). I thought I’d just but s new one but they seem to be selling for over $500! What’s up with that? What can I get that’s just as good but in the $150 range?

What games do they play that the current card cant play well?
 

I would recommend waiting a couple months. This is probably the worst time to buy a video card. Stock is depleted, prices are excessive, and new options will be released soon.

Time will tell. I generally think more option is better than less option.

B stock had some 1050s this morning.

mike734

repo1979
What games do they play that the current card cant play well?
 

Everything plays well on the good PC. They play Fallout 4, Skyrim. Rocket league. They want to play those on the second PC but they won’t play because that one only has the mother board graphics.

I bought the 950 in 2015. How is it that it is an expensive card today? I’m not used to PC hardware going up in price years later. If I want to buy something today, what would be the best value card?

because they are hard to find, supply and demand laws. if you can find a 1050 it would be a smidge better than the 950 ( and worlds better than the IGP on the cpu )but finding one that is not over priced right now is the hard part, buy only from trusted sources, with the insanity going on now there are some shady cards out there. b-stock may be your best option, you only get a 1yr warranty but i have had good luck with them.

I agree that if you can find a GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti for a decent price (less than $175) it would be good for what you want. I would highly suggest that you make sure the PC you want to upgrade from on board graphics to a dedicated gpu is actually ready to support it.
Is the power supply big enough?
Do you need a GPU without a pci-e power connector?
Is the CPU powerful enough to run the games you want to play? Does the system have enough ram to run the games?

mike734
I decided to get the B-stock 1050 recommended above. The PC should handle it. It has 16 gigs ram and an Intel i3 4130 processor running 64 bit windows 10. And yes, it does have a pci Express x16 (gen3) slot. The power supply is 300wt which I know is the minimum, but I think it will work. If not I can upgrade that fairly easily. 
 
Thank you, everyone. I'll let you know how the upgrade goes. 
 
I've put the OS on a Solid state drive 

 
Congrats on the upgrade! Sounds like a solid choice.

mike734
While we’re at it. What processor would be the best bang for buck upgrade for my HP 500-267? It has a 1150 socket and can take up to a Haswell i7 4790s. Seems like an i5 somewhere would be about right for $400 but I don’t know if the MB can benefit from everything more advance CPUs have to offer. Plus I doubt I’d see much difference, would I? It currently has an i3 4130

Unfortunately your stuck with an intel socket that was single generation on an oem motherboard that's going to be difficult to verify comparability. That being said though any CPU in the Haswell line that is the same tdp or lower should theoretically work. I'd say a safe upgrade would be something like an i5-4690S or i7-4790S should be fine. Finding those parts for a price you want to pay may be fairly difficult though. A quick ebay search shows the i5-4690s for about $130. Again though unless you can find an actual hardware compatibility list proceed at your own risk.