Graphics Card Advice

I am shopping for a new graphics card, specifically for Grand Theft Auto 4. I am looking to turn all the detail settings up as high as they will go, at a resolution of 1680 x 1050. I have tried both an ATI X2 card and an ATI crossfire configuration. They both made the game perform horribly. I have learned that you need at least 1.5GB of video ram to turn the draw distance all the way up to 100. The Newegg link contains a card I am looking at. I looks promising, but I want to run it by you guys before I dig out the MasterCard.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102826

The specs of my system are:

- 800 watt Antec PSU

- Gigabyte X48-DS5 motherboard (brand new)

- Intel Quad Core 2.66 GhZ

- 3GB DDR2 1200 RAM

- 80GB hard drive (space is not important for me, I use removable drives for storage)

- LG DVD/RW drive

- Sound Blaster X-FI PCI sound card

- Linksys wireless G PCI card

At present I am running this graphics card in my system:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102802

It plays GTA 4 well with most of the settings well above medium, but still not near the max.

That whole paragraph was the quickest incremental steps in making yourself broke.

Oh and it reads non stop. Punctuation can't be that hard?

As for the OP: If you want to play GTA4 - get an Xbox 360 / PS3. The port for GTA4 to PC is incredibly poor and I wouldn't upgrade that much for GTA (as awesome game as it is).

GTA4 is VERY CPU intensive. Are you running the Q6700? A Q9xxx? Try overclocking it...that should help. A Q6700 should go to 3.4 with a decent heatsink.