I dont know what games you play, but my 9600XT can't handle everything I throw at it. I want to play with some 4x AA and 8x AF in Unreal Tournament 2004 with 60 fps. Now thats throwin stuff at it. True, you can play most every game out there with full detail, except maybe far cry, but this is just with standard filtering and antialiasing. If you want you games to look their best you need to use that which will require something more than the 9600XT that im rockin now.