I agree, but I didnt see the point of pairing a new gpu with an older cpu/mobo combination.

Far better (money permitting) to upgrade all of it. Im just splitting hairs though.

Agreed the plan is to eventually upgrade the whole kitten caboodle. However can't do that at the time being and am in dire need of an upgrade, my rig is just too old, gonna be behind the curve however I look at it so I'm probably going to stick with the 5770, should last a good long while (longer than my current card ~2 years) before needing an upgrade, and in that time I can gradually upgrade the rest of my computer.

A Q9550 is not really outdated...not at all. I second..er...third..er..you get the idea, the 5770. A couple of buddys have that card; one runs it in an old AMD 5000X2 and the other runs it in an Intel Core2Duo E6700. Both run Rise of Flight butter smooth at medium settings (the Intel E6700 can push it nearly all the way up and still be smooth with no HDR).

My simpit uses the Q6600 that I upgraded my desktop from, with an ATI HD5850 it plays all games smooth (6 gigs running windows 7 64bit). Rise of Flight, Arma II, Battlefield Bad Company 2 (DirectX 11 game that is eye candy out the wazzu), Blackshark, Flaming Cliffs, and Modern Warfare 2. (I installed and ran the FPS's to see how well they would work with the Q6600, but I kind of like playing them in the pit...my own little frag world, lol). The quad core is no bottleneck as far as I can tell. You should be very happy with the HD5770 until you do full upgrade in the future. Dont forget, ATI has really refined their Eyefinity system, mine works excellent, the HD5770 does too (from the reports that I have read). Three monitors kicks (explainitive deleted)

it was never clear for me how the nvidia cards handle triplehead..

whoever has those fancy Nvidia cards like the GTX480, IS TRIPLEHEAD POSSIBLE on ONE video card (without a matrox TH2G)??

No, you need two cards.
I'm also looking to upgrade my GFX card, but I'll hold out for the ATI refresh in October or November. The 6770 (5770 refresh) should be a good value.

Just saw the 5850 for $254. That 460 is putting the pressure on ATI/AMD.