New video card.

[Harddriver]

I'm looking to finally upgrade my 8600GT for something new and exciting! Just an intermediate card between the ranges of $250-300, give or take that is compatible with the Asus P5N-D Nvidia nForce 750i motherboard. I need to make Starcraft 2 look pretty!

 

[King Icewind]

Goes without saying,

5850

Sapphire HD5850 299.99. Link is commissioned for Hardforums, so the [H] will get some of the sale.

 

[Zink]

HD 5830 for in your price range. For $310 the HD 5850. Or wait for the GTX460 this summer.

 

[E4g1e]

You're in a pretty tough position given your system's motherboard. Right now cards with NVIDIA GPUs in that price range have a relatively poor performance-to-price ratio compared to those with AMD (ATi) GPUs. Plus, nForce chipsets for Intel processors aren't the most stable or reliable of chipsets to begin with: You'd need software drivers just to even get the core logic to function properly, and there is a significant risk that the required nForce motherboard chipset drivers would conflict with a lot of hardware devices.

If I were in that position, I would have scrapped the entire platform and start all over again from scratch (with an i5 platform and Intel chipset).

 

[Dangman]

What PSU do you have? Bad idea to upgrade the video card if the PSU can't handle it.

 

[Harddriver]

What PSU do you have? Bad idea to upgrade the video card if the PSU can't handle it.

650 Watt -- Corsair CMPSU-650TX Power Supply SLI Ready

You're in a pretty tough position given your system's motherboard. Right now cards with NVIDIA GPUs in that price range have a relatively poor performance-to-price ratio compared to those with AMD (ATi) GPUs. Plus, nForce chipsets for Intel processors aren't the most stable or reliable of chipsets to begin with: You'd need software drivers just to even get the core logic to function properly, and there is a significant risk that the required nForce motherboard chipset drivers would conflict with a lot of hardware devices.

If I were in that position, I would have scrapped the entire platform and start all over again from scratch (with an i5 platform and Intel chipset).

Does that apply with an ATi card as well?

 

[E4g1e]

Does that apply with an ATi card as well?

Yes, the nForce mobo drivers can conflict with ATi cards under certain circumstances (specifically, those cards could have displayed graphics at a significantly slower speed than you would have expected).

And why did you pick an LGA775 mobo with SLI capability if you've been running (or are planning to run) only a single graphics card? A motherboard with an Intel P43 or P45 chipset, such as a Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L, would have been a better choice than an nForce SLI motherboard for such use.