I found out that my power supply was not good enough for my graphics card. You need at least 500 watts of power to drive any of the decent cards. You should also think about your computer chip as part of the package. I run a AMD5000+ chip, 550 watt power supply, And a Nvidia 8800gt OC. The graphics card comes overclocked from the factory, But I used their Ntune software to push it to the limit. The game runs with all the bells and whistles at 1280x1024 resolution. Has not failed yet. captziggy