Advice on Graphics card upgrade

Hello all.

I am looking to upgrade my graphics card and need some advice. I just purchased the Unreal Pack on steam, and am struggling with UT3. (not really a shock :-)

Current System:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+
Gigabyte M57SLI-S4 (nForce 570 SLI)
6GB Ram
2 x Geforce 7900 GS in SLI
(Vista 64bit)

Unsurprisingly, UT3 struggles at 960*600 res and low detail with the old graphics cards.

I am looking to stick with NVidia at the moment and was thinking of either a Geforce 9600GTX+ or (go all out) a Geforce GTX 260.

The issue is both of these cards are PCI Express 2.0 and I am pretty sure my motherboard is PCI Express 1.0.

Are either of these cards compatible with my current board? (Do 2.0 cards just clock them selves down to a PCI Express 1 port?)

The fast PCI Express 1.0/1.1 card I can find is a Geforce 9600GT. I am thinking a single one of those probably wont be enough for UT3.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks, Tim.

Got to tell you there is something wrong with your system than. My Geforce 7600 GT played UT3 on low settings with 20-30 FPS, my 7950 GX2 and 8800 GTS (320 MB) which is really close to what you have MAXED UT3 with 30-40 FPS, haven't played UT3 with my new 4850 but there has to be something wrong.

Ok, I went back into UT, pushed the res up to 1280*720. It runs at 40-60fps. So I guess it was just looking really crap at 960*600. I am still getting some artifacts on the screen, and i notice it when it drops to 40.

I don't think the CPU is a huge bottleneck here. This is not the time or place for a AMD vs Intel grudge match, but a 2.6ghz dual core amd will hold its own against a 2.5ghz Pentium Dual Core (even if it is the worfdale architecture).

Thanks for all the really quick replies, I think I will look at getting a 9600GTX+ as an upgrade.

OC your 5200+ and get a GTX260, 4850 or 4870. I would get the 4870 if i could afford it. if you are on a budget the 4850 will be an upgrade.

do you have a good psu?

My power supply is only a 430W. I think I would rather stick with what I know and go with the 9800GTX+ I would probably need to get a new PSU for a 9800GTX+ anyway.

But I am beging to think the CPU could do with an upgrade. I just didn't want to get a new M/B+PSU+RAM etc.

In terms of being ready for an SLI rig with two 9800GTX's would a 650W Antec be enough?

newegg is having a sale on powercolor 4850
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a little better performance then the 9800gtx ATI Radeon HD 4850 Versus NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/731/1/
you probably might need a little better psu ? 500w with at least 30a on the 12v rail or rails