Wireless Adapters

Okay, so here's whats going on:
I currently use a Linksys Wireless-g (2.4GHz) USB Network Adapter to connect to the internet when I'm at home (its a WUSB54G ver.4 if anyone is interested). I've had the thing for well over a year, and its worked great, loved it. Recently though, windows has found a whole slew of driver updates for the thing, and ever since installing them I've been running into problems. Mainly, I randomly disconnect - especially if there's a lot of network traffic (like when I'm running torrents). I've also noticed that the adapter runs very hot (when it used to always run very cool) - so I think the heat is the issue (this seems especially apparent since when it does DC, unplugging for 5 mins and replugging it in fixes the issue temporarily). I've tried rolling back to older drivers to no avail, and in some cases windows has even refused to let me - stating that the current driver is the most recent one...

Sooo, rather than continuing this, I've decided to look into getting a new adapter. From what I've heard, PCI adapters are more reliable and yield better speeds than USB ones (please correct me if this is wrong) so that's what I've been looking at. I was wondering if anyone could suggest brands/specific models that they know work well and sell for under $50 if possible. It needs to be reliable and have good speeds. I do run lots of torrents and play lots of MMO's, so it needs to be able to handle the load.

Some related computer specs (ask for more if necessary):
OS: Vista Home Premium (32 bit)
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.60GHz
3GB RAM
Network: 802.11G (WPA-2)

I personally like linksys and netgear, so I'd say get one of them.

As for Pci over USB I've always heard that PCI has a longer life span as the board and components are out in the open and not compacted into a tiny space.

And as for faster speeds it's pretty much irrelevant as it would only be a few bytes/MB a second or so. For example say your connection is 1.5Mbs your card if its a 54g will be at 54Mbs. So its irrelevant if it can run at its peak or not.

That's true, even if your machine is capable of running at super speeds, your actual connection may not come anywhere near that speed. I use lynksys myself, they're not too expensive and they're pretty reliable and effective for my purposes.