Advice on a ~$200 card for an old system

In that price range we'd really need to know what your psu can handle. Also that CPU is pretty weak and a card that expensive would be kind of wasted on it. If you can/are willing to overclock it that would help though. Also what resolution you are going to be using is important for an appropriate recommendation.

That said the answer to your question is an HD4890 or this GTX 275;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814162038
Expanding your price range to include an HD5850 would be wise but only if you are going to upgrade that CPU as well.

4890/275 will be bottlenecked by your CPU.
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http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2452.html

See the latest article on toms,Even those 100$ CPU which perform better than your CPU show some bnek)

The best for you will be a HD5770 or HD 4870 if you wanna go cheap...
OC your CPU to unleash full power of these GPUs.

Shoot, I'd even say 4850 or 4770 and put the rest in the bank for a major upgrade down the road.

I don't really need it to be very future proof, as the moment I get the chance, I will get a new system, my current "goal/dream" is SLI or Crossfire. but then again I could use the card I am getting now for the SLI/Crossfire later.... Hmm....

Okay, thank you all for your help.

As for OCing, know any good cheap CPU coolers?

At your resolution a GTS 250 would be plenty. As would the ATI 4850. The 4870/5770, GTX 260 cards would be more than you need.

If your goal is to completely rebuild a new system in the near future, I'd go for the cheap solution now. Or, you can buy a real nice GPU now, realizing you won't get it's performance yet, and use that GPU after you rebuild later.

Yeah, at that resolution just get an HD4850/HD4770 and OC that CPU. Anything more would be a waste of money. You should be able to get a decent OC on the processor even just on stock cooling.

The 5750 does not outperform the 4870. It's hurt somewhat by it's lower bandwidth. It's less graphics power for more money but the power savings is nice. The 4850 is just cheap. They can be had for around a 100 dollars. The OP's rig doesn't gain anything from the faster cards. If the 4830 was still available and he could get it for 75 or less I'd say choose that one and save even more money. You're just not going to see much difference on a core 2 dou clocked at 2.16 ghz and a 1280 x 1024 monitor.

Might as well go with an HD4870 if you are going to spend the $130 it would cost for a HD5750.
Really either an HD4670 or 9600GSO should be fine for 1280 x 1024 and they can both be had for about $40 after rebate at the moment on newegg.

The gt250, hd 4770(which i didnt know was so awesome), and the hd 4850(i would choose this one) are all good to go for you.

Ummm... If you don't mind me asking.... Can your mobo handle SLI or Crossfire. IF not either don't bother with any SLI/Crossfire recomendations. If it does, go with Crossfiring the 4850s at newegg for 100$ total its 200$ for a great preformance. If you want to go with single cards for now. The best choices are the 4870/4890s since they are budget preformers. Um go with the 4870s, you'd get the best preformance for your money, since. I've heard that the 4890s only preform a few fps better than the 4870s but are like... 40$ more for the same 1gb card. meaning a 4870 1gb vs a 4890 1gb. Umm.. 275s i'd say are to prices, but who knows, since Intel mobos have always prefered the nVidia chips over the ATI chips.

Because they are dirt cheap and entirely appropriate for his resolution and CPU? To save money now and later upgrade the CPU, monitor and card all at once?

If he OCs that CPU to 3ish ghz then it will be acceptable for the moment but far from great even now, much less in the future. Those two cards are very far from crappy for his resolution and at $40 they are by far the best deal around for low resolution gaming.
The argument that he would save money by purchasing a card more powerful than he needs at the moment in order to transfer it to some computer he might build at some point in the future is simply wrong. This is $40 we are talking about and the price of video cards is always dropping. Would you be surprised if an HD5850 costs $150 a year from today? I sure wouldn't. If he builds a new PC with a high res monitor in a year an HD4870 will likely be showing its age at that point and worth replacing when he never really needed it at all for gaming at 1280 x 1024.

EXACTLY THANK YOU JOFA! God..... I see your logic Jy. But, why do that? For all we know, the Fermi performance could not best the 5xxx series, therefore prices are unpredictable. And either your crazy or something, DX10 will stay mainstream for a while, years to come infact. And even if the 4870 is overkill for his resoulution, why spend more when you could just get it now. And yes Jofa i agree with the 5xxx thing too.