My point was not that the game is CPU intensive, nor that upgrading his GPU is unnecessary. My point was that upgrading his GPU without upgarding his CPU is next to pointless. His CPU can't serve a modern GPU, regardless of how fast the modern GPU is (in fact, the faster the GPU, the less cost effective it would be for him to purchase without upgrading his CPU).

I'm running a single GTX 570 SuperClocked with a Core i7 870 (2.9Ghz). I consistantly get 60-80 FPS on all max settings (including shadows) in 1080p on a 120hz 27" display.

OP, please take care in upgrading your GPU. Your CPU is at the bottom of the barrel of modern CPU's. First gen i3's are faster. Your CPU WILL BOTTLE NECK modern GPU's. You CANNOT upgrade your GPU to a modern model without upgrading your CPU. You'll be wasting money on a high end GPU that your CPU can't serve at full speed.

Uhh.... 1st generation i3's out perform his CPU. If he upgrades his GPU, it will probably be immidiately bottle necked by the CPU's inability to serve the GPU data fast enough. If he upgrades one, he should probably upgrade the other.

Your GPU and CPU are both pretty old. 4GB of RAM is currently the minimum for most modern computers. 6-8GB is quickly becoming the norm. You'll have a smoother experience by making sure nothing is running in the background, and upgrading your GPU and CPU.

This, except BioWare has already stated that the security key is being developed by a 3rd party, so it has nothing to do with who BioWare has on staff.

The 5830 may have been discontinued.

If that works fine for you, awesome! The G13 might not be worth while. A lot of it comes down to play style. As a healer, I often have to have a lot of different spells available to me at any given time. Especially to avoid switching between a party layout and a solo layout. I've actually already maxed out the convenient UI space and am hoping BioWare opens the way for mods within the next month so better hotbar layouts become possible.

I do believe a and d function as q and e when using the right mouse button. I find this gives the best of both worlds as one can use the mouse to navigate and have strafing keys, or one can not use the mouse and have turning keys.

Radeons will work with Intels, nvidias will work with AMD's. There's no limits on mixing and matching GPU's and CPU's, although a slow CPU will bottle neck a fast GPU. There's really not any better nvidias in the 100-150 dollar range. Most of the competition is in the very high end, 200+ range for GPU's. Your next best bet is the Radeon 6790 for 125, or the 5830 for 110.

It takes effort, but the effort can pay off. How many hot keys do you use on your keyboard with your hand (no mouse click or mouse hand help)? Do you have to look down to use any of those? If I told you I can easily use 20 hot keys with my left hand, without looking down and without using my mouse or my mouse hand (and that's mostly limited by the UI at the moment, I could easily increase that to 30 or 40), would you think the G13 is worth it?

I've owned both (the old n52) as well, and disagree. The thing that makes the 2 worlds apart is the curvature of the n52. With the n52, it's MUCH easier to each all the buttons. I have large hands, and very long fingers, so I'm able to navigate almost all the buttons of my G13 with only a small amount of effort (and there are more buttons on the G13), but centering yourself on the n52 is MUCH easier, and there's absolutely no difficulty at all, even for someone with smaller hands, in reaching all the buttons. That being said, I'm not at all unhappy with the G13. It's really grown on me and even the joystick is fine for controlling my character. A and D keys typically turn you very fast, regardless of whether they're bound on a joystick or not, so the fact that it's hard to carefully navigate left and right with the joystick is not a complaint of mine, nor really even a fault with the G13.

Did you also change motherboards to a motherboard that supports an 1155 socket? If you want to go with a nvidia, I'd recommend a 550 Ti GTX for around 130, or a GTX 460 for around 150. There are comparable Radeons in that price range and other people have had much better success with Radeons then I have. Going nvidia is totally a personal preference of mine due to bad experiences with Radeon, and shouldn't unduly influence you.

In a big way: memory addressing. 32-bit programs and operating systems only have 4GB of memory addressing. Without using specialized protocols/architecture to reference additional memory space, 4GB is the limit, and it must be shared by all memory using prehiperals (RAM, GPU, any USB device with memory space, etc.).

This, unless you're doing multimedia editing/production. A video game today is unlikely to use more than 3GB of RAM. Throw in your OS, browser, IM, VoIP, and anti-virus and you're barely hitting 5-6GB. The rest is just gravy.

It's an alright PC, it's not terrible for the price, especially since you need to buy a case. You could probably pick a Raddeon 4890, or 5830 for the same price, and both do better in benchmarks. Alternatively, you could up your GPU price by 15 bucks and go for a 6790. I can't comment too much on Radeons myself. I owned a 5770 and it gave me a bit of trouble. I've since upgraded to a Nvidia 570GTX (the 3rd nvidia card I've owned) and love it. Having had trouble with 2 Radeon cards and none of my 3 nvidia cards, I have a hard time recommending them to anyone. Long term, your upgrade is a bit of a dead end. AMD won't carry the AM3+ slot once they get off their duffs and release smaller architecture (32nm, or 25nm if they decide to skip ahead), the best upgrade you can get, the 1100T, is already becoming out of date, and from what I understand AMD is basically abandoning the home CPU market to Intel anyway and refocusing on server CPU architecture. It will be a bit more expensive, but if you plan to upgrade with in a year or so, going for a SandyBridge Intel will behoove you. You'll literally be looking for just a new CPU (a 200-300 dollar upgrade) rather than a CPU and motherboard (a 350-500 dollar upgrade).

Depends on your budget. If you have a virtually unlimited budget, I'd recommend a high end i7, like the 3930K (600 bucks) or the 2700K (360 bucks or so, and buy one for me too, please!). Alternatively, if you don't have a lot of money to spend now, but would like to upgrade in the future, I'd look into a SandyBridge i3 (i3's range from 110 to 150 and would use the same socket as the i7 2700K so you could upgrade in the future) or i5 (i5's run the gambit from 190 to 220 on NewEgg now, and use the LGA1155 slot which allows an upgrade tot he 2700K i7 in the future). Finally, if your strapped for cash and don't see yourself upgrading again the future, an 1100T is the best AMD you can purchase. It's not at all in the same ball park as Intel's SandyBridge and it will severly limit your ability to upgrade (including graphics cards) in the future, but you can get them far cheaper than a SandyBridge i5.

Why did that person underclock their computer so much?

Good for the price. You'd notice a nice performance boost with another 4GB of RAM. You'd notice a HUGE performance boost by upgrading your CPU. Your GPU is probably pushing your CPU to the max, if the CPU can even keep up with it.

Good chance you're bottle necking your graphics cards. You should consider switching over to a Core i series build if you've got the money, you'll probably notice a big incease in performance. To give you perspective, the x6 1100T is the only AMD processor available that beats my year old 1st gen i7 (the 870) in benchmarks. AMD has absolutely nothing to compete with SandyBridge at the moment, and GPU technology has advanced far enough that even high end AMD's are bottlenecking the GPU.

Chewpaco, IMHO, it would be better to allow the community to develop mods under rather strict regulations, similar to WoW's method. This provides the advantage of allowing players to customize in a way developers cannot anticipate: For example, I use a G13 (and, during my WoW days, a n52) and have a rather odd hotbar layout. It's extremely unlikely - unless the developers agree to let us have totally dynamic hotbars, including custom number of rows, custom amount of buttons in each row, custom coloring for buttons and rows, custom placement of the rows - that BioWare will be able to meet my demands for hotbar UI layout. In fact, their current system is so subpar, I've reached level 18 and have run out of convenient hot bar space. Yes, there's more hot bars avaialble, but none that I can sensibly access from my G13 due to the UI layout and my complete inability to customize it. In WoW, I had access to 12 buttons per hot bar, and 3 hot bars (for a total of 36 hot keys that I could hit with ease using a single hand, no mouse). Despite the fact that my G13 allows me to increase that number to closer to 16 per hot bar (for a total of 48 hot keys), the TOR UI limits me to only 10 easy to reach hot keys due to layout.

Actually closer to 4, but that's neither here nor there. You're also assuming that the OS uses no RAM, which it uses closer to 1.2GB, limiting you to less than 2.8GB for the game if you don't have a 64-bit OS and more than 4GB of RAM. And that's assuming you have absolutely nothing else running - no anti-virus, no messangers or VoIP programs, nothing. For most gamers, the happy medium in RAM right now is about 6GB. This gives room for the OS files, an instant messanger or two (including VoIP software), anti-virus, and a game.

If your "content" is based on how quickly I can click on my companions portrait (or the portait of a party member) rather than knowing what spell to cast, on who, when, and in what order - you sir, lack challenging content to begin with and are making up for it in other ways.

It'll make your entire computing experience more enjoyable, not just this game. Even a modest upgrade to a Core i3 system will give you a noticible increase in speed and performance when coupled with a better GPU and 8GB of RAM.

Unfortunately, I really can't recommend a single upgrade to you. Your problem is a culmination of things that won't be solved by simply replacing 1 part - or that part will require you to replace other things for it to work. Increasing your RAM should be your top priority, followed very closely with a GPU upgrade. I'm not sure your GPU even meets minimum requirements, but if it does, it does so just barely. You can't upgrade your RAM unless you have a 64 bit operating system, and if your motherboard doesn't support at least dual channeled DDR2, you really can't afford to replace your RAM without upgrading your motherboard. If you've got any hope of getting computer parts or gift cards this Christmas, I'd recommend looking on new egg for deals around the holidays. You can pick up a pretty basic Core i system with a new GPU, motherboard, and RAM for probably a few hundred dollars, and it will scream compared to your current system.