Of servers, settings, graphics and games

I'm still playing around with my shiny new PC, but it does occasionally throw me curveballs. Firstly the graphics card isn't up to much, which I expected, but I really wasn't prepared for just how diabolically crap it is. It's an ATI ES1000, or somesuch, which is apparently bog standard for server boxes. It claims to do acceleration, but in actual fact the implementation is so poor that generally it's better not to bother. As a case in point, I installed Unreal Tournament (1999) the other day, just to have something to mess about with when developer's block gets the better of me. It supports Direct3D, and so does my PC, allegedly, so I gave it a whirl. It's quite depressing when the game you're running is 10 years old and it still won't run on your whizzy new quad core beastie. It's even more depressing when you realise that the reason it won't run is the unbelieveably lousy graphics chipset you're saddled with and that, when you run the thing with software rendering and set the executable to run in windows 98 compatibility mode, everything works perfectly.

So, at least it works. What's less cool is that EVE Online, which I was hoping to try, does not. It flat out refuses to even start. :(

I know I bought this box for development and general messing about, the odd bit of video transcoding and that sort of thing (which it does very, very well), but it would be nice if I could shoehorn some decent video hardware in there too. Which leads me to a question. I only have a couple of PCI-E x8 slots available to me. I have yet to find an x8 video card, but I do know that, providing the slot is open-ended, an x16 card will fit and work (albeit at x8 speeds). My slot isn't open-ended, but it's nothing a sharp craft knife won't fix. I also know an x1 card will work. My question is, which route should I take? I don't need anything fancy, something that will handle reasonably modern games should do, I just don't want the video to be letting the side down anymore. The machine itself is a big, throbbing beast, it just has some real problems spitting out pictures. So, suggestions anyone?