Dell XPS 410 - Biggest/Fastest Video Card

The gts 450 is very similar to the gtx 550 ti so I wouldn't take that upgrade path. The 7770 is a great gpu and would net you a performance increase near 30% in terms of pure graphics.
The problem is that I have never tried a gpu like the 7770 with a core 2 duo which I would expect to be about half the effective speed of a 3.3ghz i3-2120. Using that estimation I couldn't really suggest going beyond the 7770 because you would be bottlenecking most gpus way beyond its value. If you did want to go more, I would suggest the gtx 560.

If I were you I would use the system you have until spring and build a brand new haswell system. But that's just me.

The "biggest and fastest" would be any card you can afford. Your case accepts full size PCIe cards. Your PSU is adequate. The only weak link is the aging dual core that will bottle neck cards above... oh, say a GTX 550ti or HD 6770. You may even be able to use a HD 6850/GTX 460 with very little noticable bottle neck.

I would recommend 7770 or a 6850.

Thank you all for he advice. I started doing some searching on the 7770 and the 6850. This looks like the front runner.

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

Any thoughts? Thank you again.

Heh, I hear ya. I think once new jobs starts up, hopefully before Winter, I will start buying parts for new rig. But for now I wanted to make sure this aging box can keep up little bit longer.  
She'll make a fine media streaming server once I retire her from gaming.

Your power supply should be sufficient for that card and it will give you much better performance. Good luck.

The HD 6850 is priced pretty good right now. It should be a nice improvement for the dual core up to 1680x1050 rez. Maybe even 1080p if you don't mind backing off on some eye candy.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=E...

any one have any experience with ASUS or Sapphire? I'm leaning towards the Sapphire.
This is the ASUS

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-121-...

I've never tried an Asus card yet, but every Sapphire I've built with has been and still is working. And I've built quite a few.

Been a few weeks with the Sapphire. I have to say I can def notice a difference. Had some driver issues but worked them out. Things are much more shinny and a bit smoother, expect for Gothem Impostors but I think that is just a buggy port of a game. I think this card will hold me over till I build a new rig. Hell I may even just move this card over to the new build when I get around too it. Thanks again for all the insight.

Don't forget to download/install the game profiles for your card from AMD. Btw, what resolution is your monitor?

Update: Still going a long with very few issues. Mostly in Beta Tests of games. for the record my monitor is a 27" LCD Panasonic TV hooked up via HDMI.

Part of me wants to throw a SSD in this box and new/bigger mech hard drive and see how it goes, haha.

Is your 27" a 720p or 1080p HDTV?

The SSD will make disk access seem to happen a lot quicker, but it won't help a bit with gaming graphics. Save your money for the new system you talked about earlier.

If you have occasional glitches in some games, it may mean you need to do a little housekeeping. I like to run CCleaner every so often to rid the system of registry errors and resource hogging crap that builds up over time and causes issues and slows down your system.
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

If you want to go the extra mile, uninstall your gfx driver again and run Driver Sweeper from safe mode. Have it remove any remnants of AMD, Nvidia, and ATI graphic drivers it finds. Re-boot and install the latest driver for your card and O/S.
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4266-driver-sweeper.h...