well, you probably aren't running in tri-channel mode with the ram (4 gigs), but it should be plenty to keep the game happy.

Get that sucker up to 3x 2 gig sticks, put them in the right place.

what's "everything else"?

oh, nice. So that's, like, a worse than usual case scenario for me.

1.5 gig's eh? That ain't much.

btw, how is your cooler blocking your ram? Physically blocking them?

hope for the best, expect the worst!

like you said though, framerate is everything. In the past I've always sacrificed graphic quality for control, and I'm fine doing it now too.

Of course I'm speaking about Multiplayer, which is everything in a game like Battlefield.

Okay so dilema as regards to the card resolved, I think I'll get the EVGA NVIDIA Geforce GTX 580 / 1.5GB GDDR5 / PCI Express 2.0 Graphics Card from Play.com at £363.49 IF it will work with my pc.

Which is where I'll need your help again either Grift or Fr0sty. Is there anyway I can use windows (XP) to tell me the specs of my PC so I don't have to open her up and physically check everything? After that I'd appreciate some advice on what needs upgrading =)

Okay so I have:

Intel Core 2 Dup CPU E6550 @ 2.33GHz (2CPUs)
2046MB RAM
DX9
NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512MB

Any recommendations then for any quad core CPUs or RAM manufacturers?

If the new core-i range is superior in performance to the old core2duo range, then thumbs up, as the last rig I ever built had a core2duo and it flew! I had upgraded ram in the past, as well as gpu`s etc and notice some improvements overall, but when I installed that chip it was faster than anything I`ve ever had before and blew my mind!

Even though my current Alienware desktop houses an AMD chip, I`d much rather have an Intel due to the above and remember that Core i7 processors come with four or six cores too, so perhaps an OTT upgrade to a 6-core beast would suffise? ;0)

Some people have said in the past, (on the internet etc), that dual core chips would benefit users over quad core (+) chips for gaming etc as they give faster results. Is it true that there are only a handful of games at the moment that take full advantage of a quad core cpu`s? If so, then try to base your choice on what games you`ll be playing not only next week, but also over the next couple of years.

Either way, I`m hoping that my current setup keeps going for a while longer. I`ve missed so many new innovations recently, that I`ll wait until 2012+ before I build a new pc. DDR-3 Ram is out, (and cheap now), SSHD`s are slowly falling in price and USB 3.0 should be standard across the board when I next upgrade.

I`d say to stick with Intel though and look at the new i7`s. They can be expensive, but if you fancy a cheaper alternative, then look at the i5`s. An i5 is primarily quad-core in it`s architecture, whereas the i3 is dual core only.

I`ve been away from building pc`s for a while now, so if any of my information is incorrect then I apologise in advance.......only trying to help.

Every time I look at user reviews for new Nvidia drivers, they keep downgrading back to the 270 or 275's for stability.
I'm afraid to even get a new card now as I wouldn't get all the functionality out of the old stable drivers, yet upgrading to the new ones seems to be full of system failing nonsense, e.g system won't boot, crashes constantly.

Hmmm. Hopefully a temporary low point.

To allow people to upgrade from a 32bit Vista maybe? Not everybody likes to do a clean install which means lose all your programs and settings etc..

I agree they should have ditched 32bit alltogether, 64bit with more memorysupport etc is the way to go now..

Are you going to upgrade CPU too? Oh and upgrading GPU for Batman is worth it :P