Todd wrote:

But I was thinking of getting the video card now so I could enjoy the
higher fps and so forth. I play quite a bit of games (like BF2,
BF2142, etc...) so I would enjoy being able to run the game in a higher
res and getting more fps, but actually I was just about to buy Splinter
Cell, so I'm not happy to hear that it has problems with the 8800. Of
course, i've heard this game has a lot of problems in general...

If the wet-blanket approach of waiting until all the hot spots of new
hardware bugginess are put out vexes you, I can recommend the 7950GT as
the card to suit your needs.

It is mature, drivers are very robust, it is a superior performer, it's
a true plug and play upgrade, no new PSU or CPU or motherboard required
in an average PCI-E based system. You also have the option of getting it
in 'silent'.

I run BF2 with a 7950GT @ 4xFSAA+ gamma correction and supersampling +
16x trilinearly filtered anisotropic goodness all at 1600x1200 at high
refresh rates, and the game renders faster than I can move my mouse.

I mention that to assure you that the 7950GT can handle BF2, it can also
handle Oblivion at 1600x1200 no antialiasing, 16x 'bri-linear'
anisotropic filtering along with HDR with, here's the best part, all
landscape 512x512 textures replaced with 4096x4096 textures. The 512M of
onboard ram certainly comes in handy with that texture loading, it never
hiccups!

It also has HDMI, if that concerns you. But it is no 8800GTS, then
again, in three months, the 8800GTS will be yesterday's news, but the
7950GT will still be a rock solid performer. I think the GeForce8
architecture is very solidly built and will scale nicely in the future.