The Quadro series isn't made for gaming, so ignore them.
The 8000 and 9000 series use the same chip, which is okay, but not great, and if you have a 3D ready monitor, it'd be a waste to use the 8800->9800 on it. The GTX260 is a pretty good card at a good price now, but if your wallet and power supply can take it, the GTX280 is a beast and will play whatever you want maxed out (Other than the obvious power hungy/poorly optimised games, like Crysis). SO I'd say go for the GTX280. If you've spent the cash on a 3D  ready screen, you owe it to yourself to get a card to match.

He has now bought the GTS 250.

Matzy, the GTS 250 is about 50% faster than his 8800GS, and anything more expensive is out of his budget.

GTS250 it is. Gonna try it out tonight...

Was going to do it last night but the vide card needed somesort of a weird 8 pin power input from the power supply and not your standard 6 pin PCI express power supply. So I had to get that adapter today...as well as a new power supply.

I don't have a single molex/sata plug available after this...lol

yes i know BUT he wants a 3d gaming card so he can use the glasses. ATI cards do not work. Hence why hes asking for an nvidia card. And since he already has an 8800 i was basically saying he should either wait for prices to come down before he buys a new card as nothing short of a gtx 260 is going to make much of a difference...

I told him that a 250 might not have playable framerates with 3D but he obviously thought that was OK.

Prices... won't come down. Nvidia simply can't sell their existing chips cheaper because of their huge die sizes (the GTX 260 was intended to be a $400+ class card). If the could sell the GTX285 cheaper they would be, because it loses heavily on performance per dollar to the 5870. Same with the 295 and the 5870. And the 260 and the 5770.  Their new generation isn't due until Feb, but that's the high-end and there won't be a change in the sub-$200 market until 4-6 months after that because they need time to make the derivative parts.

I'll post here in a few days and let you know how each of the games I have installed right now is doing with the new card.

You'll be surprised howmuch setting detail to medium and turning off AA helps in most games...even at a 1920x1080 res.

Well...

I treid it out and it worked great on games like FEAR and Half Life 2. Not so much for Gears of War though. Im scared to try crysis...

In any case, this was all part of the plan...as I will be setting up an GTS 250 SLI in a few weeks :)

Does your motherboard allow SLI? And if your budget was that high, why didn't you buy a single GTX 275 instead of two GTS 250s?

Yeah it does have 2 PCI express slots. It will be a tight fit which makes me worry about cooling but we will see...

Believe it or not, it will still come out cheaper this way. GTX275 is around 300 bucks here + tax...if you find a good deal.

Plus the benchmarks I saw and research I did indicated that GTS250 SLI is better than GTX275... would you not agree?

SLI requires more than 2 PCI-e slots. It requires you to have an Nvidia motherboard, or one of the few motherboards Nvidia has certified for SLI (P55 or X58). If they have, it will be on the motherboard specs or in a BIOS update. Crossfire has no such restrictions.

I know the setup will give greater performance in most games, but if SLI doesn't have a driver profile on a particular game, or the game is very new, SLI may not work and you'll be reduced to the performance of a single GTS 250 (or worse in some cases). I'm not saying don't do it, just be aware that could happen.