[Solved] Replacement card for the obsolete 8800 GTX?

Howdy folks,

Nothing like a computer problem to make me feel dumb. I think my Geforce 8800 GTX has died on me. Whenever I boot up my computer, the bios screen has whitish yellow lines all over the place and if I start up Vista64 in safe mode, I end up staring at a black background with hundreds of red wavy lines and my mouse pointer. System hangs here. If I start my comp normally, I get a BSOD loop as soon as window loads.

Neither the PC vendor nor the card's manufacturer will give me any advice. The most I've gotten out of them is that the warranty has expired and they no longer carry the card. So now I find myself trying to find a replacement card. Problem is, I haven't looked at video cards in two years and apparently video cards now use PCI-Express X 16 2.0 while my Asus P5n-E SLI motherboard simply uses X 16 1.0. I've heard that not all 2.0 cards will work with the 1.0. Would a 2.0 card struggle in a 1.0 slot or would I not notice a difference if I was, say, using a Geforce 9800?

I'm also concerned if I can physically fit a card into my computer. When a card is listed as taking up 2 slots, are they just referring to the slots on the back of the computer case or is the card so big it blocks access to an adjacent PCI-Express slot?

I need help trying to find a card that offers similar performance to my 8800 GTX that will fit into a single PCI-Express X 16 1.0 slot (audio card in the other X16) and doesn't use more than 2 6-pin aux connectors. ATI cards are also welcome.

I appreciate any help, comments, questions, etc. I'd be happy to clarify anything.

Thanks for reading.

2.0 is backwards compatible with 1.0 so you are fine with your current slot

if you are looking at similar performance to the 8800GTX, look at the GTS250 or ATI 4850. If you can fit the 8800GTX, you can fit either of those two cards.

Wow, quick responses. I'm glad hardware hasn't changed too much. $200 is what I'm willing to spend but if I can find a replacement for less then I'm happy.
So, has one of the Big 2 one out or is it still about even in the ATI VS NVidia fight?

Again thanks for the help. You guys are awesome. Looks like I'm going to be newegging it up after dinner.

Well I took your advice, OvrClkr. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

Well the card arrived Monday. After installing it, bios booted up normally but I could not get windows to load. Booting in safe mode caused it to hang while it was loading system drivers. I ended up just reformating and reinstalling Vista. Computer works fine now. Thanks again for everyone's help.