General Discussions

My conclusion is that if you can't afford another gtx you should forget about upgrading because that would be your cheapest bet.

Upgrading, unless it's to something much newer, won't have much of a performance gain. The problem isn't that my 8800 is getting slow--it's not--it's just rapidly becoming technologically insufficient.

So what would I upgrade to, that is "budget" priced, that I won't suffer a performance hit with?

Then you should try the dark side, ATI. 57 or 58xx series card, would be your best bet.

You should wait till the card doesn't do the job anymore and then go for something like an ATI 48xx or 58xx or a Nvidia GTX265 or 275. I don't know of any "budget" cards better than the one you have.

I would get rid of your 8800GTX even though it was once a great card.

Get something else.

Even if you got a 2nd 8800GTX, you miss out in newer OpenGL version, CUDA and Physx also. If you stick to Nvidia cards that is.

Ok, but it certainly seems that I can't both give it up and get a performance increase within my idea of what I can afford to pay.

And why would I replace it if I'm not getting a performance increase?

A 260GT Is a big boost and a reasonable price, even 5770 from ATI is reasonably priced and good performance.