Smoke and fire effects lag my video card, is it broken?

This mainly happens in Call of Duty 4, and it's even worse in World at War, walking through a smoke grenade lowers my fps down to 10-15, from a usual 40-80. The single player mission "Burn em out" is unplayable, since there are many smoke grenades and flamethrowers, a combination of the two gives me about 4fps. I don't think this is a common problem although I've heard of a few people having the same issue.

My card is an XFX 9600gso 768MB GDDR2, and it runs pretty much all my games are maximum settings. Smoke in Left 4 Dead seems to lag me as well, but Fallout 3 and Call of Duty 2 for example, play just fine. I know in Call of Duty 4 disabling "Soften Smoke Edges" seemed to help a bit, but this option doesn't exist in World at War. Is there a workaround I could try, or should I contact XFX and try to get a replacement (which I really don't want to do since it could take months). I've tried changing Operating Systems and using different drivers, but they don't seem to change anything. Full specs listed below:

Windows XP SP3 32 bit
4GB G.Skill DDR2-800
500GB Samsung Spinpoint
XFX 9600GSO 768MB GDDR2
AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 3.1GHz
Motherboard was made by Acer (Computer used to be prebuilt until I upgraded everything besides the motherboard)
480W Sunbeam Power Supply, 18A on 12V

+1 to rtfm

However as it is a pre-built can you run cpu-z and find out how many pic-e lanes you are actually using, its a long shot but it might only be 4 or 8, although 8 should be plenty, it was for my 7900GTO.

I agree with the card not quite being up to it.

Corey, others might not be running as high a res or as much AA or some other graphical setting. there is probably a specific setting that affects smoke and fire although I wouldn't know what it's called.

And the term for graphics isn't lag, that's a networking term.

The card just isnt up to par with newer games, theres nothing wrong with it.

What resolution are you running? COD4 was flawless with my 8800GT and like butter with my HD4850 at 1680x1050.

Nb. As you you say pretty much all your other games run fine, that pretty much eliminates hardware issues like overheating, inadequate power, yada yada - if it were a hardware problem, the system would crap out on any demanding 3d game.

Are you running AA? Turn it off.

Hmmm, that is quite odd indeed as that card gets decent benchies, not great but playable for sure.

Just curious, is AA enabled in your Nvidia control panel? Or perhaps the transparency AA (multisampling or supersampling)? That can be a killer too.

Ya know I got Crysis to run kickass in DX9 on the ole 8800gt, but as soon as I got close to the frozen ship it slideshowed due to the mist\smoke\vapors etc...

You may just have to turn something down a tad or buy another card, that's what I did

i can play high settings at 1366x768 on my lappy and i only have a 9600m gs but i spent ages messing with the settings and nvidia control panel to get it just right