Solid upgrade to an 8800GT?

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I completely agree. The 4870 is also a good choice, if you can't get a 5770, but it lacks DX11.

Get a card with at least 1 GB of RAM. It's becoming the new standard, and you don't want to get left behind. It's not just resolution; textures will inevitably increase in size and detail to take advantage of the extra memory.

From an 8800GT?

Any of these cards: HD4870, HD4890, HD5770, HD5850, HD5870; GTX 260, GTX 275 or GTX 280.

Any of these would be a solid upgrade to your card.

Edit: Unrelated, but how do you find being a pilot? It's a career that I'm thinking of pursuing when I'm a big boy.

Edit #2: I see you've got an Ultra X3 1000W. That's a decent power supply, but you're not using enough power to make it worthwhile; underloading a power supply can have issues with efficiency, you'll only be pulling maybe 350W with your current system. If you sold the power supply and bought a smaller, more efficient model, you'd have a lot more money to spend on your system.

Edit #3: You've got an SLi motherboard, why not just get another 8800GT? That's a cheap, albeit slightly old setup, but it'll still perform pretty darn well.

depends how much you want to spend of your $300

for 100-150 you could grab a evga gts 250 which is a great card for the money and still have $150 for other things. currently I am running MW2 at max settings and getting around 50 fps. I am also running Cod 4 maxed out at 60-70 fps.

all in all its a great card, economical, quiet(big thing for me), with big performance.

however, if you want to spend $250-300 i would absolutely go with a evga gtx 275

EDIT: just saw that you mobo supports sli you could use the other $150 to go sli with the gts 250's

thanks

P.S. don't sell your 8800 GT it is a part of history

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they have a 8800gtx on sale on newegg
at least they had it yesterday
lemme go find link

EDIT:
Dont have it anymore

otherwise
the GTX260 216 scales really good
i love that card and it gives me great fps in all my games

Thanks for all the great advice! I love this forum because you can post a thread, go to lunch, and come back to a ton of detailed suggestions. I'm going to start doing some research on the cards that you guys suggested.

I definitely won't be selling the 8800gt. It's going into my standby rig to replace the much older card that is dying a slow death. It's a great card and I don't really need ~$80 that I would get on Ebay for it.

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IRT Edit 1: I love flying. I'm just a private pilot (no desire to fly big iron), but I'm working towards a commercial rating so I can work for the smaller airlines and become a Certified Flight Instructor. I have a few hours of time scheduled for this upcoming weekend so I can just get into the sky and practice some maneuvers and precision landings.

It's an expensive hobby, though, as it costs about $50 to operate a plane, and if you are renting an aircraft (as I am this weekend) it's closer to $100 an hour. I'm lucky in that I am a DINK, so I have a good amount of disposable income. If you have the money to spare it is a skill worth learning. It's estimated that less than 0.5% of the American population holds a valid pilot's license of any classification.

IRT Edit 2: I know about the efficiency issues, but the X3 came out of an old server that I am rebuilding. When that one is back up I'll probably use a 600W in the workstation. I actually have 5 computers at home because I used to run my own business; my oldest computer is a Slot A!

IRT Edit 3: I think I would prefer to just get a new card so I can salvage the 8800gt to keep one of my older workstations going. I have heard about issues with SLI not really giving a significant performance advantage at 1600x1050, though I have never really tested it myself.

Thanks again for the help guys. I'm going to pass out some rep here soon...