I have been suspecting for a while that my video card was something of a bottleneck. It was a nVidia 8800 GTS, and what's more I was having some intermittent crashes in the video driver. Needless to say that kind of messes up your game. So I kept an eye open for a good special.
A few weeks ago Fry's had an nVidia GTX 465 advertised. It was the eVGA "superclocked" version, which isn't much of a boost but it's something, and after rebate was $180. I did some research and while a 1GB GTX 460 is supposed to be great, was newer and used less power, otherwise there wasn't much difference compared to the 465. (The 768MB GTX 460 is crippled, though, so don't get one!) Most complaints about the 465 were price based, and the 460 while hailed as a great thing wasn't on sale. So I got me a new 465. And it does make a difference! So far I've subjectively compared it to the old card using Dragon Age, BFBC2, Oblivion, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC, at 1680 x 1050. Quite favorably impressed. Biggest difference was Oblivion, least seems to be BFBC2, but again the comparison was subjective. Maybe I turned up the goodies too far...
Oh, and I got a free download of Metro 2033. Haven't played it yet.
New vid card
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