The "X" Factor

If you're doing hardware upgrades, this might be a useful story;

Soooo if anyone caught me bragging about the clearance puppy GPU I snagged from bestbuy a couple weeks back, be warned.  X, makes a difference.  I picked up a 2Gig Geforce 500GT series, for $100 thinking it was a steal (500GTX series are their current top of the line).  Managed wow fine on good settings, struggled on anything higher.  Witcher 2, was barely playable with settings throught the floor.  I initially blamed it on the 1.5 yo processor... but appearantly my 2.6 phenom II quad core is still fairly decent.  After doing a little benchamarking and research, I realized my mistake... luckily in enough time to exchange it.  Got ANOTHER clearance puppy, an overclocked 460GTX with nearly 10x the power for only $25 more.  Not a top of the line powerhouse, but definately upper mid range, and VERY economical.  Installed and ran a heroic on highest settings last night, never dropped below 50fps (Ogri dropped into the 40's a couple of times).  Witcher 2 ran like a champ on next to highest settings too.  So ya... X makes a difference. At least on paper, I've got an acceptable rig for skyrim and swotor now... maybe not at eye candy levels, but hopefully it will be enough to hold me another year.