WOW - New Graphics Card or more RAM?

[Roland]

Some random comments for you, Roland.  I have had your graphics card and an Abit motherboard since about the start of the year.

I'm curious what kind of in game performance levels you are getting with what you have now.  It seems like it should already be a pretty nice rig, but the CPU probably can't keep up.  If the card came with Farcry, what kind of settings and FPS are you getting?  Just curious.

Yep, as I suspected. According to these three links, I should be getting anywhere from 23.7 (High Quality at 1600x1200 with 4xFSAA) to 70.0 (High Quality at 1024x768 with no FSAA) average FPS in Doom 3. Now, granted, my RAM will be a bit slower, and after the upgrade so will my processor (without overclocking, which I probably WILL do), but even so I expect that to only make a difference of a few FPS. As such, the aforementioned evidence leads me to believe (whole-heartedly) that my card is currently SEVERELY CPU limited, and as such the graphical sluggishness I am experiencing are NOT a result of the card itself, but rather that the CPU cannot handle all the data the GPU is trying to get. It does make sense, seeing as how I can crank FSAA to 8xS and Anisotropic filtering to 16x, with full Trilinear filtering, and experience no severely noticeable increase in slowdown (in other words, the increased graphical lag is minimal compared to "normal" settings). Even Doom 3 is playable at High Quality with all settings in the driver maxed out (albeit at 1024x768, since that's the highest my monitor can display), although Far Cry is not quite as playable, particularly in MP (although near-perfect in SP).

My g/f and I have already gotten our state tax refunds (Telefile + Direct Deposit = ~4-day turnaround; I got mine in 5 days, she got hers in 3, two of which were a weekend for both of ours), and I calculated my unemployment insurance (a pittance, but enough to get us by for now, given her income), so it looks hopeful that I'll be getting my upgrade when I get my federal tax return. :D If only she hadn't lost one of her earrings (sapphire stud - a Christmas gift from when we first started dating over a year ago; I TOLD her not to wear her jewelry to work at the day care, despite how she doesn't remember it... *sigh*). But anyway...

I guess that settles it. The video card is too powerful for this old comp, so it's high-time for an upgrade. :) I'm going to wait to build a new system until Intel-compatible fully-SLI compliant motherboards start coming out (as it stands, only AMD-supported boards are out, and even then only with the nForce4 chipset; there's a few workaround Intel boards out, but nothing worth investing yet; besides, SLI is too new and unsupported to make it worth the money now). Dual 6800 Ultras is just SICK! :D Ah, what the future holds in store... How I drool. :)