I am rebuilding a old pc i was previously using, for a friend.

The PC currently has a Intel C2Q 6600. It overclocks to 3ghz on a air cooler a fairly cheap one, I'd say quality of the air cooler is worse than a hyper 212+.
The motherboard, is a EVGA 680i sli board.
I also have 4gb of 2x2 800mhz mushkin ddr2 ram.

My questions were, what would be the best video card to pair with this board / cpu combo?

I had a EVGA GTX 560 SC 2gb edition. Playing WoW I had 65/70 fps almost everywhere I went on absolute ultra settings a few months back. @ 1440x900 resolution.

I was hoping to buy a video card in the range of 90-120$ and still get close to similar FPS. I do believe the cpu heavily bottlenecked the video card. I am wondering if it's achievable to hit nearly same frames with a bit cheaper of a video card? I also would get a new air cooler and try to hit 3.2-3.4ghz on the cpu as well.

Said friend runs WoW @ 15-20 fps at almost all times, I don't know how he manages to play it... so anything higher than 50 fps would be amazing for him. I don't necessarily need ultra settings. A solid Medium to High would be good as well.

I would like this to be a late Christmas gift to him. Does anyone have any speculation or thoughts?

I remember those boards... The E8000 series is the best processor for those boards when it comes down to gaming.
 
You can get an E8400 for 13 dollars on eBay...
 
As for a new video card... It's going to be up to how much BIOS support EVGA has provided for it's legacy equipment. Some of the newer cards might not work on that board. I'd suggest looking into a GTX 480, GTX 570 or GTX 580. For AMD suggestions, i'd look into a HD6970 or unlocked HD6950. Quite a few of the 2GB versions of the HD6950 have the shadders that the HD6970 does, you just have to unlock them.
 
Just make sure his power supply is strong enough to handle those cards. I'd suggest at least something in the 600w range... and if his PSU is older than 4 years, he will need something in the 850w range.

RainStryke
I remember those boards... The E8000 series is the best processor for those boards when it comes down to gaming.
 
You can get an E8400 for 13 dollars on eBay...
 
As for a new video card... It's going to be up to how much BIOS support EVGA has provided for it's legacy equipment. Some of the newer cards might not work on that board. I'd suggest looking into a GTX 480, GTX 570 or GTX 580. For AMD suggestions, i'd look into a HD6970 or unlocked HD6950. Quite a few of the 2GB versions of the HD6950 have the shadders that the HD6970 does, you just have to unlock them.
 
Just make sure his power supply is strong enough to handle those cards. I'd suggest at least something in the 600w range... and if his PSU is older than 4 years, he will need something in the 850w range.

What's the reasoning behind the E8400? It's a dual core of the same generation, does it overclock better? I know that quad pounds out a ton of heat.

I will have to find something on newegg, I don't think they sell those older video cards unless there low profile versions. I don't really like buying off ebay, maybe if i have too.

I am buying him a new PSU, I was looking @ corsair or evga's 650w's. depending what comes down to a good price. I really don't want to spend more than 300$


^ how would this be?

RainStryke
 If you bought him used stuff off eBay and still wanted to have fun with overclocking... I'd recommend looking into a X58 set-up with a i7 920. That would blow away what he has now.
 

I am iffy buying stuff off ebay, especially parted out systems. I can't seem to find a full built system for a i7-920. Unless it's OEM like HP/DELL and even then its about 500$ way more expensive than buying a PSU + GPU.

I will try to keep looking around I guess. I am trying to keep the route cheap as possible. I mean anything is better than a Turion64 x2.