I ordered evga's superclocked 7800gs, might even be here by tomarow. I have a 2800XP and from my experience and what I read, this is still a fine cpu for even todays games. (keep in mind too, I am upgrading from a 9600xt. I should expect this $300 investment to bring me a worlds of difference even if I am not getting the full speed the video card is capable of)
Also I am a beliver of buying a good mobo, that pretty much kills any of those combos they sell with pcie video cards today.
Comparativly to pcie video cards, the pcie pulls better becnhmarks, sure, you have faster cpus at the same time too. But in comparison to other agp solutions, the 7800gs hauls ass. You need the overclocked version to edge out the beefy TI 850xt pe, but at the same time you get SM3.0 and all the series 7 enhancements yielding a nicer looking image. That makes the 7800gs way more attractive then ati's agp cards. (I am an ati fan, but when I needed to upgrade my 9600xt, I really made it a point to find a card that would support all the effects of todays and tomarows games to maximise the life of the card. When reading that halflife 2 would probably be the first and last HDR the SM2.0 would see, I made SM3.0 a requirement. That pretty much nixed any chances ati had in the agp realm. :/)