Upgrading Advice Please

Zillah

Relevant details of my current system:

Intel 3.2ghz processor.
2 gig ram.
Radeon X850XT.

My PC was top of the range when we got it but its starting to lag far behind these days. It used to be a question of "I can run it but I'll have to lower the most system heavy options", but now thanks to pixel shader 3.0 I'm in the position of "This game will not even launch".

So I'm not in a position to buy an entirely new system at the moment, I'm looking for a relatively low cost option to catch up. Pixel shader 3.0 is the highest priority so I can at least get back to being able to run newer games even if it means turning some options down. The x850xt takes a PCI slot so I assume my motherboard can handle newer cards?

I was looking at a GeForce 9600GT for about 100 euro but if there's a significantly better card I can go for a bit more. I'm leaving the country traveling in a few months so spending much more than that isn't wise.

Advice welcome, thanks.

Zillah

This is my motherboard.

The GeForce 8600 is "PCI Express 2.0 x16" while the motherboard has "1 PCI Express X16, 2 PCI Express X1". Is that 2.0 a problem?

EDIT: So research says it doesn't matter because its backwards compatible.

K.O.Kiki

Like I was told a few weeks ago: sell the CPU (assuming it's a Pentium IV), mobo & GPU and do a full system upgrade.
Or just sell the system & buy a new one.

*shrug*

TerrorFirmer

As above an entire upgrade would be good, a 9600GT is a fast card for the money and top notch performer in modern games at high-ish settings, but it'll be brutally bottlenecked by a Pentium 4. If it's by any chance a Pentium D you're in a slightly better situation though, I'd go for it. The 2.0 doesn't matter, no.

Zillah

Like I said, there's no point upgrading the whole system, I'm leaving the country in a couple months. So the 9600GT will work for now, super.