thanks for the advice folks, much appreciated - i'll look into the 8800 card for sure. If I were to go for the 8800 card and keep my current CPU would that be a bottleneck? My preference woud be a new cpu as I would need a new mobo but budget could be limited (the lady indoors has a lot to say about expenditure on pc equipment versus expenditure on other household items

)
Thanks again,
Simon.