4850 or 8800gt sli?

Well, sadly with your processor, the performance increase will be very little. I suggest you upgrade your processor first. Then your video card.

It's because I have a similar specs to yours, and when I changed my video card from the Radeon 3850 to the Radeon 4850. The game I wanted to have higher FPS on higher settings but ended up with similar framerates, which is GRID and Crysis. This maybe means that in some games, getting an SLI will be fruitless as you'll be CPU limited.

stridervm is right about the cpu. You'll get some bottlenecking either way, but I would still go with the 4850

Well look at the ati fanbois rush in, let me apologize for them.

Now, to your original question. Even at 22'' I don't think you would need 2 8800's, I have a 8800GT and use a 24'' LG monitor and I can run basically anything within reason(not crysis on very high).

Personally, I would look at benchmarks, see if the 8800GT in sli would even benefit me in any of the games I play, if they didn't, I would look at how the single 8800GT compares to the 4850 in the games I play, then I would choose a single card solution. As I said, even with a 22'' you shouldn't have problems in most games with a single 8800GT or a 4850 which ever one you decide on.

The comments on your CPU are somewhat correct, it is somewhat poor, but not terrible by any means.

Check the benchmarks out, avoid personal opinions, see if a single card solution will suit your needs and then choose between the two cards. If you must go SLI, the 8800GT's sli amazingly and if the games you play support it, it would crush the single 4850 as it should being two cards.

Good luck-

Also depends on what version of the Nforce4 chipset his board has. Some of them were 16x/1x, some 8x/8x, and the Nforce4 Ultra being 16x/16x. I think the performance between 8/8 and 16/16 is the same with the 8800GT, so as long as he has either of those he should be fine. Two 8800GT's outperform a single 4850 no doubt, thats not even in the question.

But being that he already has a 4850 and it would cost him an additional $70 to sell/buy.....Just seems like a questionable decision for something that he recieved for free, regardless of performance numbers.

By the way, no need to apologize for "ati fanbois" Liderc, I dont think there is any of that here in this thread. Dont be so fast in attempting to "stand your ground" next time.

No, I didn't miss this, I didn't say sell the 4850 at any time in my post, I suggested he see if a single card solution would be sufficient for his needs. He can sell the 4850 and buy something else if he wants. He asked if he should sell the 4850 and buy an 8800GT for sli and I brought up the fact that he probably wouldn't need two 8800gt's in sli to play games on a 22'' monitor.

i'm not fan of NVIDIA nieghther AMD/ATI
i only listen what my pocket says, what is important here is the Graphic Chipset Technology, as u see Nvidia's Series 8000 is older than AMD's.
if u think about the future keep 4850 and set Crossfire in Future with apropriate Chipset like P35, or AMD790

I wouldn't SLI without upgrading your PSU. I hate to sound critical, but that Rocketfish is Circuit City's (or was it BB?) "house" generic brand, and I read a recent review that said it was among the worst measured performance and worst quality PSU they had ever reviewed. Solid PSUs are so cheap nowadays. I would not trust any kind of SLI setup to that PSU--which may influence your decision.

But on the bright side, have you OC'd your CPU? You could likely get more life out of it if you can get it up a couple MHz.

Good luck!