I would NOT disable superfetch unless you're trying to run Vista with not enough RAM. It's a valuable feature.

It's mostly games with large open maps and complex textures that you will see the benefits of 4GB of RAM. Doesn't anyone remember back in the day when they first started playing BF2 as one did the texture-loading stutter step at the start of every level as their HD spun away in abandon? Well with 4GB that's a thing of the past. All those FPS with huge individual levels now load smoothly and quickly.

WDT-BlackKat

An 8800GT or HD4850 can maximize all settings on the game up to 1680x1050 sans AA and run very well on fps.

Since AA is nigh irrelevant at high resolutions like that it is quite safe to say that even a sub $200 video card can max the game.

WDT-BlackKat

Corsair 650W TX

Saphire 4850

Samsung 500GB

Slightly over at £246.53 inc. postage but the 4850 is about the same performance as a 9800 but with whats in stock, a lot cheaper.

edit: you can't compare with US prices, they get stuff cheaper than us. newegg has the 4850 for $174.99 so you would think that would cost £88 here. It doesn't it's roughly £125 ($247.62)

The complaints got started years ago with a long line of very bad ports. Far too many developers would do a one for one copy when moving a console title to the PC. This created numerous games that were a lot of fun on the cosole but looked, played, and sounded bad on the PC. When creating a port you must rework it for the new platform.

Player expectations have a lot to do with it too. People who play primarally console games expect something different from their games then we do on the PC.

The hardware divide is still a big factor. Deus Ex and its sequal Invisible War are a good example. With Inivisible War they tried to build a game that looked good on the PC but still ran on an X-Box using 5 year old technology. In order to do this they had to make massive changes to the overall gameplay and feel the first game introduced us to. The open enviroments took on a very boxy feel and the character customization options were cut down to nearly nothing.

I'm not trying to say Inivisible War is a bad game. If it had come out first it probably would have won over a lot of critics. However, sequels are always compared to the previous game and this one did not measure up.

Drosa