I have a over clocked 9600gt card (760/1110) vs stock 650/900
And an athlon 5000+ BE ( 2800mhz stock(wtf) runnng at 2940 mhz)  5 % ai over clock.
And i am getting around 9600 3dmarks @ default. Sometimes more, sometimes less. MY friend, for intstance had the  same, if not better score with 8800gts 320 e6550 all stock. As far as i know athlon running @ almost 300o mhz delivers around the same performance as 6600. And e6600> e6550.  And 9600 gt stock> 8800gts. ANd my card is overclocked and should be very cloe in performance to 8800gt.  Or am i missing something?

Im pretty sure the processor is holding you back.  BIG TIME get something like a E8400 or E8500.  Also what kind of RAM are you using?

You should adjust your OC in the BIOS!! I just OC'd a friends 5000+ BE from the stock setting of 2.6 gHz to 3.1, by just simply moving the multiplier up to 15.5 in his BIOS. It is stable and no voltage adjustments needed. That won't probably make too much difference in the synthetic benchmark, but will make the system a little more snappier, but not much more over your 2.9 gHz setting now. You might also want to make sure that you have run an anti-virus scan, ad aware scan, & a disk defrag too. It would also help to make sure that you don't have alot of programs in your taskbar. All of these little things will make your system perform a little better. I wouldn't worry too much about your scores from 3dmark, its not real world tests, but does give you an idea. Hope this helps.

This doesn't make much sense, since he already has a system. He'd have to buy a new mobo and the CPU to do what you suggested. This would be about $300 or so, which doesn't make much sense. He just needs to address a few things to make the system a little faster. It would help to know the rest of his system, so we could help him troubleshoot better though.

Wow someone with an 8800GTS and an E6550 is scoring about the same or a little better than you with a 5000+ BE and a 9600GT and your complaining?

By big time, you mean by maybe 20%?

I'd say that's about right for your combination of parts, but you can raise your overclock quite a bit.

 
I agree, your friends system should be waaaaaay faster.

3DMark06 score around 10K is the average of 9600GT remaining would depends on your CPU and how many%you overclocked your GPU and CPU.

Boonality thats gts 320, not 512.. and stock