if all else fails, go into the config file, and turn down the lod, speculars,shadows and relflection sizes. at very high they are 2048 i think, and turning them down to 1024 will prove much better performance. also turn your 3rd core, or core 2(ex it will say core 0,1,2,3) to the physics core. this will let you have a lot of performance at higher visuals. you should play around with the setting based upon your card. for example, HDR with only 512mb of vram is stressing, so in options turn it off. things like that. make sure to backup every time you change something.

whats your idle?

crysis isnt optimized for todays cards. thats why an 8800gt single can get 30fps on high and a 4870 will get 40. 25fps on crysis very high at 1440x900 is pretty much what youd expect. the gts 250 is a decent card, but it isnt as good as other value choices. i myself got a 4890 for 170$ a couple of months ago. anyway, even the 4890 struggles on crysis at very high on higher resolutions. your pretty much getting what you paid for, and although it is a decent gaming card, it is not a very good one either. with only 512mb of vram, the buffer will be lower. sure it is more then enough for 1440x900 but still.

ok thats good. also, only 2 posts on the heatsink are actually working, the other 2 are broken, if i got a new heatsink, would that bring y temps down? and at my current temps, would overclocking do much? ive seen people at around 85 celcius on their e5200's and it being fine.

hi. i have an e5200 and i am wondering why my idles are high. my idle is around 32C, but my load is nly around 47C 100% during crysis. whats with that? ive seen people with like, 25 idle and 50 load or 30 idle and 52 load. is there a reason. i have the R0 stepping and intels dg31r motherboard. its nto overclockable and i cant seem to find a thin to turn off speedstep

what cpu do you have. if you have a pentium d or an amd athln x2, the threshhold may have been reached.

beleve they made the nvidia 6800 ultra for pci. rofl that maybe a good option, you can find one

theres no 8800 agp, if you were implying that. best agp card is the 3870

no it wll return it to the original oem state it was bought at.

and only need 400w im pretty sure, even tho it says more.