Best card for the amd phenom 9650

hi, i have £250 to spend on a graphics card, i have a amd phenom 9650 at 2.4gzh, 4gb of ddr2 800 ram and win7 pro 64bit, i have 2 free ram slots in my motherboard and need the best graphics card that will make the most diffrence, i know it will bottleneck alot of cards, now much will it affect the framerate on 1280 * 1024? and would it be a good idea to get a hd 5850 and upgrade my cpu to a phenom 2 3ghz ? or should i just get a hd 5770 or somthing, thanks in advance

I'm definitely watching this thread as I am about to pull the trigger trading my laptop on a Phenom 9500 system with 8500GT and the video card is the first thing I want to change out. I guess the question here is finding the ceiling on a Phenom X4 9xxx where video is concerned. How much is overkill and what would be the ideal card to make the most of these AM2+ processors?

If I had to make a wild guess I would say 4850-4870 would eliminate any video bottle-necking without spending too much money.

A 4850 is almost perfect for that resolution, you will be able to play most games on highest settings with some AA and get 60FPS on average. If you would like a card that gives similar performance while running cooler check out the 5750, it even offers DX11 support.