The right card for my upgrade

[BioPenguin]

Hey everyone! This is my first THW post, hope this is the right place to put it.

I just received a Dell 4700 from a friend didn't need any more.
I was preparing to spend $600-700 on a decent sized upgrade
but with the PCI-E slot on this dell I figured why not
save my self a couple hundred for the time being and hold off
on upgrading for a year or so. With DX11, W7 even PCI-E 3.0
hopefully showing up in my year's time frame I figured this
wasn't a horrible idea.


Dell 4700
Pentium 4 HT 3.2ghz 1mb L2 cache - 800Mhz FSB
OCZ StealthXtreme 700w psu
OCZ Platinum DDR 800 4x1gb
XP Pro & Vista 32-bit Home premium



Now what I'd like to know is, with the limitations of my CPU
What is the right/best video card I could really
Originally I was looking at a 260 (216) or a 4870, but
with my CPU I won't be able to reap the benefits of
such cards (because of the bottleneck), right?
So then I started going down from there
and I've started looking at the 9800 GTX+ with prices as low
as 130-40 after a mail in rebate & the 4850 which you can find for
130 on New Egg right now. Could my CPU even grasp either of
these cards? What do you think would be the best solution?
I'd like to keep it under 170 and with a game bundle (FarCry2, COD4, ect. )
if possible.

Thanks,
BioPenguin


EDIT: Thought I might add that I'm gaming on a samsung 20 inch monitor either at 1280 x 1024 or 1600x1400. Thanks again.

 

[dirtmountain]

If it were my system i'd probably go for either the HD4850 at $130 AR or the 9800GTX+ with game bundle at $155 AR. Yes, it will be bottlenecked by your CPU, but there's always a bottleneck someplace it should still give you decent performance at higher resolutions. At least you don't have any worries about your PSU supporting it. Another option you might consider is going for either a HD3870 or a 9600GT at about $75 AR to minimize how much cash you're dumping into a basically outdated system. I should add that one reason i'd go with the more powerful GPU is that i have other systems along with family and friends systems that i could always shift the GPU to if i wasn't satisfied with the performance.

 

[BioPenguin]

What do you think my FPS or over all game play will be like with the 9800 GTX+ and my CPU?

Thanks,
BioPenguin.

 

[coozie7]

This link may prove helpful, but read the front page first, it`ll help you interpret the results.

http://www.guru3d.com/category/vga_charts/

 

[BioPenguin]

Thanks coozie! Any other opinions? I think I'm pretty close
To settling on a XFX 9800GTX+ with FC2 bundle for $155 After rebates.