So I decided to fork over a chunk of cash for an 8800GTS with a 640MB processor core. Pretty sweet deal, in the end. It runs the Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4 demos beautifully, World in Conflict's framerate doesn't drop with a nuke, everything looks fantastic.

The only game that still has framerate problems is the Crysis demo. That game is so incredibly demanding that when I get into combat with multiple NPCs or use my binoculars on large open areas the game has framerate stutters frequently. Hopefully it'll get a little more consistent as the demo might not represent total optimization, and hopefully there'll be patches that improve performance issues. Overall Crysis still plays really well.

I figure someday I'll upgrade to make Crysis run flawlessly but that will be a year or two down the road since this took a big chunk of cash out of me. Once the price of the 8800GTS falls to sub 200 dollars, I'll invest in an SLI upgrade- should keep my PC going for a while longer.