it depends in some games it's pretty brutal in others you will not notice,
8800GTX is better matched with a fast C2D.

if you check the 8800GTX reviews they were mostly using x6800s (C2D 2.93GHz) and such which is way faster in some games compared to any pentium D.

Pretty much. Remember, a Pentium D is really just 2 Pentium 4's slapped together on the same die (Smithfield based on Prescot, or the newer Pesler based on Cedar Mill).

NetBurst was terrible. It really shows how vastly superior the core micro-architecture was, all major intel CPU's are still using direct descendants of the original from 2006.

And Core is based on Pentium M who is based on Tualatin..

no good CPU comes from Intel America.
Israel did it.

It depends on the game and the settings. On very high resolution it might not be an issue, but in general that CPU is quite a big bottleneck. I had 8800 Ultra back in the day and it was paired with Q9450. I'd go with something similar or even better. Core2 Duo might be also ok, E8600, but E8400 is not bad and you can found those very cheap, basically for free.