WOW - New Graphics Card or more RAM?

[Drasca]

I also cast a vote toward a ram upgrade, you'll gain actual utility out of it. The video card you've chosen is... not going to help. If you want a video card upgrade, and believe RAM is not worth it (not necessarily, if my Geforce 4 card comparison holds), then saving a little more would be best.

If you choose to wait/save, I recommend doing so. If you can get your hands on a Galaxy GeForce 6600GT AGP8x eventually, it would help your 3D gaming needs greatly out of box for its prices. That assumes you do not overclock, if you're one of those, LeadTek, BFG, XFX, and a few others would be better brand choices. I hope

I've just made a purchase order for a new video card, but I have plenty of ram myself. However... I have even with plenty of ram, I've had a lot of HDD access with my GeForce 4600 128 Mb in other games when there is great 3D load demands, very similar to your own card. Regular ram will not help much in this case. Video ram helps with texture loading, but still does not process those large environments.

Turn off anti-aliasing if you want directly better performance.

This link is about various GeForce 6600GT comparisons.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2295&p=2

Hmm. A Geforce 6200 might be a decent competiter quality/price too, but that is all dependent on local price availability.

I highly recommend against purchasing a 9600. It will not help. Neither will the ram upgrade, to be honest. Neither will provide a "signifigant graphical performance" improvement. You need a modern video card. The 5x00 series nvidia cards are generally not even worth considering when prices for 6200, 6600, and particularly 6600GT are comparable and these cards provide better gfx performance by leaps and bounds.

Chew on that.