hey... i've started a wild fire here
ok - here's what i've done.
i started out by buying the geforce fx 5700 with 256 ddr ram.
it was on sale for only a couple dollars more than the 5200 version so i couldn't resist. at first blush i was quite impressed with the card - THEN - i '3d benchmarked' it and was considerably 'underwhelmed' with it's score - 1325 compared with my buddies 5000+ on his radeon 9800 pro.
next, i installed and tried to play far cry (awesome game btw), on the bare minimum for video settings, i was still running into some fairly serious fps issues (especially on indoor levels).
frustrated with all of this, i payed an extra $100 bucks and bought the 9800 pro (yes, my budget has taken a serious butt-kickin)
this card is everything that folks say it is! fast and beautiful. far cry sails along at the 'high' qualilty video settings with no framerate problems.
i love a happy ending