So the GameSpot Hardware team was kind enough to loan me a Radeon X800 Pro card over the Thanksgiving break. Holy jeeebus that thing ROCKS. Playing Half-Life 2 on that spoiled me rotten in about 13 seconds. I could finally run everything at 1280x1024 (the native res of my LCD panel) with every effect cranked to the highest setting and still get silky smooth framerates. Giving the card back on Monday was painful. I can't swing $500 for a card of that caliber at the moment. So the good news is that it looks like the fan on my old card is probably just dead or not turning fast enough to generate proper cooling. A replacement fan should set me back about $10. The bad news is now I'll be constantly saying, "boy, this sure would be nicer with an X800 card!" Oh well, I'll wait a few months for the prices to drop. Meanwhile I still have a stack of console titles about a foot high to play through.