New Mobo or new GPU

[Hades16x]

Okay well here it goes:

For christmas I was going to give my best friend my HTPC since his wife's laptop BLOWS.
20gb hdd...celeron.. screen is broke(hooked to monitor)

My HTPC:

Antec Mini P180
5000+ BE
Asus M2A-VM AM2 690G Micro ATX
Passive Asus 8600GT
2gb ram
vista x32 ulti


I originally was going to build myself a core i7 or new AMD system and move my e8400 8800gtx system as my HTPC.

Reason why is the mini P180 wont fit a 4x3 hotswap bay. I will be using my 2nd rocketfish case as the new HTPC.

Well as it turns out When I did my raid 5, I had to do it on my gaming computer.
But I couldnt fit the bay into my case since my WC tubes are in the way. As it turns out, I cant fit ANYTHING in my 5.25 inch bays in my computer because of my tubes(besides the lowest bay)
So I ghettoed it up!:

It turns out, that they dont have the money for an xbox 360, and his wife is a massive Mortal combat fan. She called me last night asking me if I could let her borrow my 360.

Well Ive been debating on getting rid of my Halo3 360 in turn for an elite since its black(matches) and it has the 120gb hdd(full game install with NXE). I know I can buy the 120gb hdd, but it wont match because of the H3's color combo - not good enough for me.

So Im going to give them my halo 3, and get myself an elite today.

So the problem:

My HTPC has 1x PCI-e slot for the GPU, 2x PCI slots and 1x PCI 1x slots.


The 1st PCI slot is covered by the passive 8600gt so I couldnt install it there, the 2nd is where my sound card is.

So I have two choices, get a new mobo that has a few more PCI slots, or a new GPU that is single slot.. like the 4850 or 4670.(4830 doesn't seem to have any true single slot solutions)

I want to keep it as cheep as possible.

I was thinking the 4670 since it supports DVI>HDMI sound, but I dont have any more free HDMI inputs on my Onkyo 705....so I have to keep my sound card with the creative true 7.1 cables.


Its a HTPC, very rarely used for gaming... Sometimes friends will play COD4 on it, or WOW, but the 8600gt does just fine

I only have it mildy overclocked(2.8ghz).

What do you think? New mobo with more PCI slots or new GPU?

Thanks,
Michael

edit: I think I forgot to tell you why I need 2x PCI slots:

1x for sound card
1x for raid card

 

[Dangman]

- About the GPU, do you care about noise or not?
- Do you mind reinstalling Vista if you get a new motherboard?
- Why not drop the 8600GT since it's rarely used for gaming?

 

[Hades16x]

Yes I do care about noise.

No I dont mind reformatting

If I upgrade GPU, I want something more powerful.