Upgrade to 9800 GT

Don't invest in old technology, especially another 9800 GT, there's newer things that annihilate that old card.. c: Nvidia just shoved out their 6xx series so keep an eye on that if you decide to wait.

BUT

All that would be feasible at the moment is a lower end card anyway. You'd experience a lot of bottleneck using anything extreme. I was thinking a gtx 550 ti, or a 7750 myself, I looked at some benchmarks and quite honestly, they go neck and neck, but the 7750 seems more superior in most ways.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/614?vs=541

I'd sooner look into a processor upgrade as well, Im assuming you're running on an AM3+ socket. AMD is shoving out their piledriver CPU's soon, so hopefully you can invest in one of those in the future. I'd personally tough it out, get a CPU upgrade, then get a beefier graphics card, but our needs are different, and if you're just going to play the occasional game on a smaller resolution, and browse the internet, do business, etc, a 7750 will definitely suffice, and most games should be smooth as butter at decent settings and resolution.

I ran a GTX 550 ti, (Which is comparable to the 7750 I believe.) And it served me very very well, the 7750 is better (and cheaper) so go for that. c:

But remember, patience is a virture. I'd buy a new CPU that fits your mobo and what not, and then invest in a graphics card. Because even a 7750 may bottleneck just a tiny bit on that dual core. (If at all anyway.) (I ran a GTX 550 ti on a athlon 4200 and trust me, i had no choice but to get used to playing at 15 frames a second in most new games. lol. But that athlon 4200 is dwarfed by your phenom, so who am I to talk. xD)

Buy a 7750.  

Okay, maybe a 6670 could do too. But it's less impressive in terms of performance per dollar.

^+1
Would invest into a lower end modern card rather than a mid/high end card from 2008 (which itself is just a rebranded 8800GT from Oct 2007 with a possible die shrink).
Wouldnt buy one unless you could get it for $20 at a computer market or garage sale.

But if you must.
EVGA 9800GT. $60 ($10 rebate)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Some old mobos actually won't support the newest video cards, or if they do, you get weird graphical artifacts in games. I have an AsRock 775-Dual VSTA from 2006, and, although it has a PCI Express x4 slot, I had to download a 3rd party BIOS in order to get the Radeon 4850 to work properly with it. And the 4850 isn't exactly a new card.

It just depends on your specific mobo and how old it is.

To the OP: You should be able to find a 9800 GT on eBay for $40. Not a great buy. You could get something like a Radeon 4830 for $30. Old video cards are surprisingly expensive. But yeah, if your mobo can support a newer card like the 6670 or the 7750, that would be better.

Supply/demand. They're no longer in production, so supply is rather scarce. Which means the price tends to be higher than the performance really justifies.

Exactly the same as how DDR2 RAM is more costly than DDR3. They make too much - no one wants it, it becomes cheap. It's sometimes actually cheaper to get the new-high end components rather than the old-dusty components due to this. Simply the law of supply and demand.

The HD6770 is a tad better than the stock 9800GT and it's priced around $55-83 (AUD). Why not opt for one of these instead?

I would still invest in a 7750, which has ddr5. c: In the future even if he bottlenecks slightly, an FX quad core processor would eliminate it entirely. And it certainly wouldn't bottleneck either.

From what im seeing there's a ddr3 and a ddr5 version of the 6670. the ddr5 version is just hitting the 100 mark, and to invest in any ddr3 card for anything but casual games wouldn't be effective even in price/performance terms. And looking at the ddr 5 version, ( which is more expensive) you might as well buy a 7750 anyway.

I myself, would still tough it out and invest in a quad core CPU first, if not to just eliminate bottleneck coming from a 7750. (Which will manifest itself in CPU hungry games, even a 6670 will bottleneck in CPU hungry games, switch on supreme commander for example. But eventually any processor will get souped by sup com, but having a quad will certainly make it more enjoyable...)

judging by the prices, the 7750 is more worth it. (In my opinion, I tried to quote some prices off of google shopping but they were broken. :c)

By the way, gddr3=ddr3 gddr5=ddr5 I was confused once myself. c:

As for old motherboards not supporting newer cards, im going to have to assume he has a relatively modern motherboard, considering he has a phenom II inside it. It should have a PCI express 2.0 x16 slot. I did hear of some newer radeons (starting from the 5xxx series) having issues with 1.0 slots. But I've never heard of artifacts suddenly appearing due to motherboard compatibility, I ran a GTX 550 ti on a socket 939 motherboard. And believe me, that thing was from 2005.

And I'm still going to have to opt for the 7750, simply because it's newer, and probably, consumes less power. And if you ever got a CPU upgrade, you'd have the 7750 to go along with, lets say a FX quad core processor and you'd have no bottleneck whatsoever.

I put a 7770 in a HP brand core2 quad q 6600. That 7770 was $120 on new egg with free shipping. That computer runs great. It is used every day for things like MW3 and valve games. In MW3 its is very balanced. At all settings maxed AAoff 1920x1080 it gets good frams like 40ish and both the cpu usage and the gpu usage are both very high like 80-100% which indicates neither part is getting held back.

You can't go wrong with that card and you can move it to a new system in the future.

You might be better off waiting until the extra conmputer is needed and at that time buy a budget card for it or a nice new card for your self, and put your old card in the extra PC.

^+1

If you're tight on cash though, the 7750 is still a fine choice. c:

But I'm still adamant about the processor upgrade from that phenom II, you could buy the card first. (You clearly need it) And then upgrade to a nice quad core, or even hexa core if your budget allows it.

How many threads about this do you have going? I provided input on your other one.

You should limit to one thread at a time on the same topic.

So that we dont duplicate too much effort - his original thread is here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/372550-33-upgrade-980...

I can't merge threads from different sections, but I can close them.