I have a widget on my desktop that tracks how the card is being used, and it routinely bumps up against 500MB as far as usage goes when running the game. I could probably lower my settings some and reduce that, but it's smooth enough for me, so meh. But yeah, 312 is not going to cut it, most likely. My card is old too, but it is the stated minimum, and it is 512MB....

That 5-year-old card will beat many brand-new cards, so yes, spending money you don't need to damn well is a no-brainer. The 8800's were designed specifically to blow the doors off anything that came before them in running texture-heavy games, and they did so well that the G80 and G92 chipsets sold all the way up until Fermi took over production.

The 320MB RAM is the only deficiency with that card, and it doesn't by itself account for the OP's performance issues.

So telling him to spend a lot of money when you don't even know what his problem is is a real no-brainer.

What new cards will it beat? The 5750 can beat that card...

EDIT: Well, he is in SLI, so obviously it would cost more to adequately replace that, but still, lets not talk about the 8800GTS like it is some technical marvel that should run everything flawlessly.

Anything under $100 US street price. So the OP is going to have to spend more than $100 to solve a problem that exists only in the mind of some strangers who neither know nor care what is the actual cause of his difficulty? Screw that.

@ Freewind

" I have the same rig as yours, except:

8800 GTS single.
intel core i7 cpu 960 @ 3.20
4GB memory.

My game runs SMOOTLY (30 FPS) on low setting. Everything is disable, included SSAO, Decals,Vertical Sync, Anti-aliasing. LOD distance =minimal, texture downscaling=high, texture memory size = small, shadow quality=low

So everything is run as minimal setting. I still enjoy the graphic very much.

I suggest you try those setting.

Also try running in window mode. It may help.

Last resort: by a new quad core. My quad core is $240. You will definitely see improvement. "

You got a good price for that i7 960 as the cheapest I have seen it is about $290. He has a Socket LGA 775 Motherboard with his proceesor, so he would have the added expense of buy a new Socket LGA 1366 Motherboard, but he could go to a Quad Core on that Motherboard, just not the the Core i series of processors.

You said you were running a Core I7 960 with 4 gb of memory. I find that rather curious in that the Motherboards are Tri Channel and the memory should be bought in matched sets of three and the MOBO has 6 DIMM slots. This would give you 3,6,9, or 12 Gb normally.( if you are running Windows 7 Ultimate you can run up to 24 Gb ). I noticed you are running a GTS 8800 as well. Good card, but there are a lot better ones with a wider bandwidth and thus better performance these days. The 8800 is fine on an LGA 775 MOBO, but with an LGA 1366. You have a much wider bandwidth across the board, so you are somewhat strangling your GPU performance with that card.

Beside the fact its off topic i agree that IF to suggest an upgrade the video card is defo the first option.
I got an 8800gts 640mb and its shelved since 3 years for me, also you can find a 5770 1gb around if not less then 100 dollarz on the market.

So well, i return to tell that 3DVision its a known issue so maybe removing it can solve any problem, googling you can find also some tips about SLI config that may help, anyway all the hints about upgrading the video card, even if not specifically requested, are quite legit as idea.

I've done something, was really looking for. went to a full 64bit system with 6Gb RAM (non dual). I practicably a running TW2 all maxed out in 1440x900 on a 9600GT.

I can top about 20fps smoothly, what I saying is now my hardware is tunned and as soon I config it right the game will run smooth.

you got 2 vga, thats is a impressive system, try to enhance other parts of your hardware that could make the difference, despise the common believes having more RAM is aways better no matter what. If you do not want to spent money right know, set your resolution to half what you are using right now and turn on the "ubbersampling". But bare in mind, anything you do in shadders will consume your memory, try to balance to what you want and beautiful graphics.

NVidia VGAs are know to not supporting great resolutions, they're middle ranges, are far worse in that matter, so a balance always preferable.

Games are slowly turning back to CPU-heavy, but still the main product is the GPU.
I have an old Intel E4300 C2D, 4GB RAM and a 260GTX.
Most of the games I play (Bulletstorm, Mass Effect 2, Mafia 2) I'm able to
max out at 1080p without AA.
Therefore my choice for OP would be a new GPU(s).