GTS 8800 320 upgrade

How much do you want to spend. Pci-e 2.0 is backwards compatible with pci-e1.0, so any pci-e 2.0 video card will work fine in a 1.0 slot.

Hello and welcome to the forums  
As bige420 said,PCI-E 2.0 is backward compatible with PCI-E 1.0,and a 8800GTS 320 will struggle at 1920x1200 so its better to get a new card for that resolution.
But what is your budget and please post your other system specs too.

Price isn't much of a concern, but to limit the damage for an old(er) build, let's say ~$200 or so ... thinking about upgrading the CPU while I'm at it, running an old E6300 Conroe  

PSU is great, a Seasonic M12 600w
RAM 4GB Corsair DDR2

Thanks for any suggestions  

My honest opinion would be to try your hand at overclocking that e6300. I had an e6400 that overclocked to 3GHZ without much headache, however 3.2GHz was kinda fun. On stock cooling you should be able to squeeze a little more out of it and even with a $20-$30 cooler get some pretty good numbers.

As far as video cards, your PSU is very capable. You could honestly run a 5870 off of it, however it is out of your price range. If you can swing $310 the 5850 is probably the best bang for the buck. They are just amazing cards (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)

However, at your price tag you have probably 2 choices. The 4890($190 + $20MIR) or 5770 ($175). Now here is where your choices come in. The 4890 is clearly the BEST performing of the two. However, the 5770 is DX11 and consumes less power. Now with DX11 games coming out next year there is a little debate on the 5750/5770 cards. Will they be able to handle the increased load of running DX11 games? And will you ultimately have to turn down the graphic settings? The 4890 is a DX10.1 card that has a nice bit of power behind it, however, you would only be able to run games in DX10.1 at most. In this situation, if I were you, I would take one of two paths. Get the 4890 and don't worry about DX11 because the 5770 may not deliver the power you need. The 4890 has enough umph behind it to run DX10 VERY well. OR fork over the $310 for a 5850 because it really delivers ALOT of power and the extra $$ investment will give the card longer playlife in your system.

5770: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
4890*: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

note: I did not include an nvidia solution in this comment because to compete with teh 4890 you would need to look at a GTX275 and they sit ate $250 and it is not a good buy in comparision.

Also, look at this review for some number on the cards I suggested. You will see the 4890 outperform the 5770 in every case and the 5850 outperforms the 4890 in every case. The choice is yours Neo. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3658&p=1

Wow that's some good info, thx guys!  

I have a Zalman 9500 along with an Antec 900 case, so airflow galore. I have not OCed as I really don't know wtf I'm doing when it comes to that, and at this point in life I just want a rig that runs reliably rather than spending too much time tinkering (I'm old!) ...

I was already deciding on a E8400 (updated mobo bios to latest-greatest to accommodate increased FSB), ready to up the ante a bit to a E8500 what the heck. I'm just confused as heck about video cards, but on tonight's nightshift on Tom's I ran across this GPU list & along with your suggestions I definitely have a couple of solid choices.

Thanks a ton!

I figured OCing your e6300 would be a cheap/FREE alternative. But if you want a new CPU that is even better.

The GPU list you gave kinda of doesn't make a ton of sense to be because they group these cards ALL togther: Discrete: 9800 GX2, GTX 260, GTX 275 Discrete: HD 4870, HD 4890, HD 5770.

The 4890 REALLY outperforms the 5770 card. The 9800GX2 should not even be considered. The GTX260 = HD4870, GTX275 = HD4890, 5770 is all alone in DX11 world and performs lower than the others in this group but has DX11.

I vote for the 4890 unless you are compeled to get the 5770 for DX11, but even better would be the 5850.

As far as CPU, I'd vote for either the e8400 or e8500 so long as this isn't a long term solution, but consider this. More and more games are becoming multi-threaded and taking advantage of quad core chips So you may want to migrate to a more than dual core setup, now or in the near future. Honestly, I wouldn't invest anything into an LGA775 socket. I had this conundrum about 6+months ago when I was using an e6850 chip. Either upgrade to a quad core or sell it off and upgrade to an i7. I went the i7 route and never looked back. I sold my old mobo, cpu, RAM, and case for a good price. Spent $750 on an i7, mem, mobo, and case. I had gotten $350 for my old stuff so it cost me $400 for the upgrade. Just something to think about. The x58 chipset REALLY helps out on graphics alot. I had a 4870 at the time and I saw huge improvements.

At this point I want to avoid upgrading the mobo, because that just leads to reinstalling the OS & I have XP Pro OEM ... I don't think I can reinstall on a new mobo? Not to mention, I'd upgrade the HDD, DDR3 RAM, etc. and by that point I'm into a completely new build and a ~$1k later ... lol

~$3-400 for a CPU & Video card will keep this unit going for another year or so, then I can think about a new build. Thanks again!

That would really stink, if that's the case  

I'd save $100 and just get the new E6300. It should tide you over and the only real difference is the amount of cache and that simply not worth THAT much money IMO. If you are going to bother spending enough to get an E84/8500 then you might as well get a quad.

I toyed with the idea of a quad core, but from what I'm reading there is not really enough software that takes advantage of it. I don't play FPS much, about the hardest gaming I do are large Civ4 maps which really bogged down the build I currently have going. Recently been playing Torchlight (to tide me over until D3) with all settings maxed & it's fluid.

I do keep a few things up all the time, like firefox (~10 pages open on average), winamp, perhaps a Word .doc or Excel spreadsheet going also, along with a game so perhaps a quad would help? Not sure.

Just trying to upgrade a few things w/o going the whole new build route, but dang it's hard not to!