Best video card for 1920x1200?

[Brent]

FYI the cpu does not overclock well at all. I tried to overclock it when it first came out with the best cpu cooler and was less than 200mhz overlock for a massive cpu temp increase. Not worth it.

That may depend on specifically which stepping of the CPU that you've received. The E0 stepping is pretty well-known to hit 3.4GHz with stock voltages.

Just a quick update for those who might be interested: I've got my Q9550 running at 3.6GHz at 1.2375V. When I try 3.8GHz or 4.0GHz, I cannot boot my system, unfortunately. I suspect that my RAM is my limitation as most P5K-E users seem to hit an FSB wall at about 470MHz anyway (from what I read on various boards online last night).

I've been running Prime95 since midnight Central time and it's still going great as of 8:00AM this morning. Temps on the cores range between 50 and 62 degrees F. (EDIT: I've got a Corsair H50 cooler on the CPU for those who're interested in knowing that.)

Now I'm debating on which card to shoot for.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I let prime95 run 12-14 hours and call it good. You'll know pretty quick if it's an unstable CPU overclock cause your operating system will get corrupt and you'll start getting errors and bsod.

As far as getting a new gpu I'd get a GTX 570 if it's $300 range or a GTX 560 ti if it's $200 range depending on what's on sale at newegg.

 

[Brent]

@OILFIELDTRASH - Thanks for the prompt feedback. Since it was only ~8 hours since Prime95 started (and the temps are in a "comfy" range), I figured it wouldn't hurt to run it for ~16 hours since I needed to go to work anyway.

I'll keep an eye on the Hot Deals forum as well as my Newegg emails to see if I can snag a ~$300 570 or 6970. I'm not really biased toward either camp. The 580 would rock if it would come down to about $370 due to my own budgeting constraints (even knowing that my Q9550 may restrict my ability to fully-utilize the GPU).

@Everyone else - This link from AT's CPU & Overclocking forum is relevant to this thread as well: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2167275 (Its subject line is: "Q9550 upgrade?")