so here is a quick update... I am playing now with CCC doing AA 4X and AF 8X, and my V-sync is now off. I am planning on taking some benchmarks with Fraps in the next couple of days; however, as a college student finishing up the semester, my free time is limited. I wanted to ask a follow up question regarding the classic Radeon vs Nivida. I'm not looking for a big discussion, but I am still able to return my radeon 6970 and get all my money back. In general will I see a better performance with a GTX 570? Or does it come down to my CPU and just getting the settings right? Also, I'm not planning on doing any SLI or Crossfire. The only programs I run during play are game booster 3, to kill unneeded windows services, and fraps so I guess I really feel like i should be getting much better performance with my $330 GPU. Is the CPU really dragging down the GPU by that much? - I'm not looking to OC in any way, I have no experience with that and I don't exactly want to take that route. Below are my specs re-posted from above: OS: Win Ult 64-bit CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9550 @2.83GHz Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS5 LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel RAM: 6Gb (3x2Gb) ddr2 GPU: HIS Radeon 6970 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 Resolution: 1920x1080 cheers