What does "download to XP" even mean.....? And also, given that that this is an old Dell prebuilt, that shipped with a 90nm Pent "D", why would you summarily make the leap to "assume" that a 45nm Celeron Dual Core would pop right in, as it were?

And what is this fixation you have regarding the E3300? Newegg list 3 other CPUs within 20 bucks of the E3300, Notably the E5300 Pent, which would likely eat it for breakfast. And all of which would require a possibly unavailable BIOS update.

Well, and then just get another motherboard, and that leads to needing all new RAM, so why not quit with the BS, and tell him to get another computer.

Oddly, after using an E7300, an E6300, and a Core-i3 530, I have no compulsion to even go near an Celeron.

Although in fairness, the E3300 would probably outperform my old E2200 Pent dual Core by a fair amount, maybe.

Last time I looked at any results of testing games in XP and Win7 there wasn't a huge difference. And in some of the modern games probably even better performance in Win7. XP was the better gaming platform over Vista. But generally doesn't not give a performance benefit over Win7.

No one has addressed one issue that could be a problem. Drivers installation.
Try uninstalling the ATi Catalyst drivers, download a program called Driver Sweeper. Run this and remove all ATi video/graphic driver files. Also remove all Nvidia video driver files (you get a check list of which files you want to clean when you run the Driver Sweeper program). Reinstall the latest ATi Catalyst driver.
Just as a precautionary measure.

Also check that the default settings or ones you've edited aren't forcing Anti aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering on the game with the ATi driver that you weren't using on the old Nvidia card and driver. This could also explain the reason why you see lower performance as you are running higher image quality settings(which I wouldn't expect to impact it much on a higher performance card but might just compound issues with the low specification CPU). Just something else to consider...

No sir, I beg your pardon, I've addressed it at least twice. Should I quote myself, or would you be kind enough to read the thread?

Yes, sorry Captaincranky. Missed the short "Am I the only one that thinks that this could be driver issues." in one post and the "Did you remove the old Nvidia driver and reboot before you installed the ATI driver? There might be a problem if bits and pieces of the old Nvidia driver are still floating around in there somewhere." in a later post. My fault for flicking between reading the forum post and about half a dozen pieces of work. My apologies again.

I did not uninstall the nvidia driver. i will get driver sweeper and take both drivers off and do a clean install. cant wait to get off work and try this out.
I dont think i will be trying it on win xp since u guys say there wont be a performance change and i have 6 gigs of ram now. will be putting the 64 bit version of win 7.
Also, i am thinking of installing directx10 instead of the directx11 i have. When i did some reading on directx11 it mentioned it has new tesselation and stuff like that which i believe would be more stressful on the cpu. Maybe thats why some1 suggested xp performs better on older computers? Perhaps with a clean install and directx10 my cpu would be up to the task.

SC2 doesn't use DX11 features anyway.

If this is the way you're going to go, then make certain you have the latest drivers for Win 7 64 bit.

IDK if the latest ATI drivers are "one size fits all", so to speak. No wait, Jared's is jewelry, right?

Jareds is jewlery. My name is Jared and i find the Jareds jewlery commercials hilarious lol.
Also, does windows xp take advantage of multiple cores processors since its newer technology?
Hypothentically speaking, (im not going to do this) if i was to underclock my video card, would it work better with my cpu?

XP does fine with at least dual core CPUs, you will see a dual CPU box in "Task Manager" "Performance Tab". I don't own any quads, so I won't speak to that. The only problem with multi-core CPUs, was with certain AMD processors, and there is a special XP update to deal with it. That said, it's the software that needs to be optimized for multiple threads.

I want to see how the driver issue resolves itself, before treading on "theoretical" ground.

Seems like no matter what I do the cpu is going to bottleneck the card just like many have suggested. I am now in the market for a different card. Thank you all for your help

Cleaning up and installing the drivers didn't help? Just in passing, you know that the 7900GT was a fairly decent card.

Well the 7900gs is descent but it does not have a hdmi output. It makes a huge difference when i connect it to my hdtv. I am trying to figure out which video card to get out of these three.
4870 512mb 256 bit.
gtx 240
9800gtx.
I hope they are compatible with my processor since they are a downgrade from the 5770

Just keep your 5770?

It is possible, although not likely that your board doesn't like the ATI Video Driver. That said, there's this GT 240; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150475 for 60 bucks, free shipping. I'm told that theses are roughly equivalent to an 8800 or 9800 GT (teensy bit less potent). It does have HDMI out.

At least the price of experimenting with this card is not too extravagant.

hmm thanx for the suggestion, i checked it out. Most of the reviews are complaining about the driver compatibilities and stability problems with it which scared me away. How about the Sparkle 9800GT? (Even though I care about the money, my top priority is performance and stability) Also, if i am gonna use a 32 inch HDTV would i need to purchage a video card that has 1 gig of ram or 512mb?

I don't know why everybody has the impression that a Hi-Def TV is hard to drive. The resolution is (at max) 1920 X 1080 with a refresh rate of 60 Hz (progressive scan) which is the same way and speed a computer monitor refreshes. in fact, a 24" or larger 16:10 computer monitor has more resolution than the TV (1920 X1200). It's only the pixel count that's important to the card, in this case , with respect to pixels at least, size doesn't matter.

Actually, using a DVI to HDMI adapter shouldn't have much, if any, effect on picture quality. DVI doesn't have sound, so you would have to patch that across separately.

OK. you keep asking more questions, which is cool, but it would improve the flow of the thread, if you would report on the results of any work you have done with the video card's driver's, just so we'd know, rather than having to read between the lines, or surmise, if you will.

I used driversweeper in safe mode to wipe out all my video drivers and reloaded the ati 5770 driver. The performance did not change. I concluded that if your processor is a pentium D dual core 3.2 gig processor or worse, you cannot run starcraft2 at medium settings or better with a radeon 5770. My goal is to now try it on a less powerful video card to see if the cpu can handle it better. This will help me conclude if it was compatibitiy issues with the high end video cards, or regardless of what video card I have the cpu will be the bottleneck.

In regards to the high def TV, thank you for the input. Just to clarify, the 512mb would be more than adequate?

Yes.

OK thanx. Now I am starting to think a video upgrade will be a waste of money
I guess I will start looking for the best cpu I can get that would fit in my 775 socket motherboard.

Well sorry Jared, deep disappointment is our stock in trade here at Techspot. Your Dell is getting on in years, in view of the Pent D CPU. Whatever CPU you find will likely not work without a BIOS update. Dell expects a pre-built machine to pretty much go to its grave in the same CPU/ board configuration it was sold with. (As do most other manufacturers). Accordingly, don't expect too much in your CPU search. I can almost guarantee you that you won't find any of the current line of 45nm CPU that will be compatible. At best you will have to search for older parts that may be still available at off the beaten track retailers, or the black hole of doom, Ebay. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. That said, it might be time to plan a new project to build.