I know this is ancient, but there may be the odd board user out there who has bolted newer goodies in and is 'putting up with certain things'
; If you have got hold of a cheap old card like a 3850 512, and put it in you will notice 3 possible problems.
First off, if you (likely) had an nvidia 7 series card using Wndws 7, you need to click in trouble shooter hardware until it notices it is running the wrong base drivers(watch you cpu and graphics 7 index scores jump).This WILL get rid of ;'your display driver stopped responding and has recovered'.
The 2nd problem you have is everything seems hunky dorey re 3dmark etc, but games like fallout and mass effect 2 crash in a visual broken kaliedascope, requiring a hard reset, and you just gave up on deadspace etc too.
The answer I was grateful for is the bios setting change PCI-E Downstream Pipeline to 'disabled' instead of 'Auto';
Let me be clear. Auto means your problem games wont run, and 'disabled'
means they WILL.
The 3rd prob everyone has noticed is you cant run more than a gig per ram slot, and sorry to say thats a bios patch only fix. If you are running a quad, leave all settings at (auto);fsb, set the ram to 333 and raise the ram v 1 notch. The chip will run at 2.3 gig.
A 3850 performs within single figure %ages of its norm 3d marks(below, of course), a 5770 is your money. A 8800gt wont post on a x4 system (in my experience!),
An 8800gtx I wouldnt attempt, tho mentioned in bios despatches.
Hope this clears some Q's, from people who may still be alive and may buy a q6600 & 3850 for the price of a round of drinks.
Happy new year.