I'd like to purchase a newer, more capable video card (current one only goes up to SM 2.0). How far can I go before my CPU begins to limit the performance?

System:
Pentium M 780 CPU (Dothan, 2.26GHz, 2MB cache)
2GB of RAM
ATI Radeon X800XT 256MB
i915 PCI-E chipset
Win XP Professional

Not enough info.

What "standard" video card? AGP, PCI-e?

For AGP you would be looking at a 79XX from nvidia.

For PCI-e you would be looking at any 8XXX series.

Sorry, I dont do ATi.

I mentioned in the first post that it has a i915 PCI-E chipset. It will take any PCI-E video card.

So will the 8800GT that was mentioned here ( http://computing.net/gaming/wwwboar... ) run to its full potential and not be limited by my single core CPU?

Thanks.

This may help with your question about the 8800GT:

GeForce 8800 Needs The Fastest CPU

If you have no intention to upgrade to Vista anytime soon, you may wanna stick with a DX9 card like the X1950Pro.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

You are right, I did'nt see the PCI-e in the first post.

I don't plan on upgrading to Vista for a while yet.

Two more questions:
How much slower is a 2.26GHZ Pentium M than the 2.6GHz Athlon FX that they used in that article?

And, would the X1950Pro be at least twice as fast as my x800XT (which is really starting to show its age)?

Thanks

EDIT: Scratch that, I just did some reasearch of my own, and I think the x1950Pro is perfect for my system.

Thanks again.