Help With Upgrading (If Possible)

#1 I too use an Intel Q6600 CPU and 4GB of DDR3 memory. But my motherboard, a ASUS Maximus Extreme, has PCI-E v2.0 support which luckily gave me a good upgrade path to use the a very recent video card the nVidia GeForce GTX460 with 1GB GDDR5 RAM and it works greats with my system. While your motherboard only supports PCI-E v1.1, therefore you'll have see less bus bandwidth available for your video card if you were to upgrade to a GTX460 like mine or latest series such as GTX560 or even GTX580.

So, yes you can upgrade to a much newer video card, but your motherboard will be a bottle neck for heavy system bus usage games like Battlefield 3. As for Torque 3D your system would be perfectly fine and you will see a big performance increase using a newer and better video card, as I did see myself when I upgraded from a GeForce 8600 GTS card with just 256MMB DDR3 RAM.

#2 While your system should run T3D fine the main problem I see with your video card is the GS aspect, GS means "Graphics Solution" which can display good graphics but not excel at displaying them.

This is my setup:
Intel Core2Duo @ 2.9ghz
4GB 667mhz RAM
9600GT 512MB

And with a slightly populated map(2 "Station" buildings, percipitation, 30-50 PhysX objects, 6-7 vehicle meshes, 10+- pickup items, 5+- AI,2 AutoTurrets and a 2000m draw distance) I average around 200-300fps in Advanced Lighting without extra shaders such as DoF,Lightray,HDR and etc.(though I'd recommend using my Advanced OptionsDlg for the added performance and customization) and about 250-350fps w/Basic Lighting.

Even my laptop at:
AMDx2 @1.9ghz
2GB 800mhz RAM
8400m G 256mb

Is playable with the above level design w/30-70fps(Basic Lighting), though I wouldn't expect it to play a populated map in T3D without framerate issues.(just for referance)

If you are trying to keep toward the low-end specs and low-cost at the very least a 9800GT 1GB or even better a GT300+ 1GB card would work fine, the biggest problem is if your power supply can handle a more powerful card, as my 9600GT required a 26Amp 12v rail and I had to shop around for that which is an added cost.
(Edit: Nathan also raised a good point about the PCI-E bus so a new motherboard is optional aswell... $$$, I know... thats why I have what I have lol)

Note: I can only speak for nVidia cards as that's all I've owned.

#3 +1 for ASUS ENGTX460

I can't find anything this card runs slow.

#4 @Frank - you're not trying hard enough. Build a scene with 5,000,000,000 polys comprised of 50% opacity objects that all need to be sorted.... That should do it.

#5 Thanks guys... Now I have both the knowledge and resources to fall back on to update my computer. I completely missed the opportunity regarding yesterdays "paradise" contest because by computer (With T3D) used 3.50 out of 4GBs and also used up 50% of my processing power. It was doomed to shut down at any moment.

Thanks for the help!

#6 Bwahahahahahahaha!

I use a single core processor (3.2ghz) with a burnt out g.card and only 2gb of ram. XD

I can run T3D smooth as butter melted in your pan under you're delicious smooth pancakes. And that's pretty smooth. So I think you should be fine.

#7 @Richard,
Haha! But I think your numbers are off. I think it would handle 5,000,000,000 polys, but 5,000,000,001 and all hell would break loose!

In all seriousness, I think 4GB memory should be enough unless you are doing something really detailed/heavy. But if you are maxing it out then maybe you do need 8 or 16 GB of ram. That might need a new motherboard. I assume you are running 64 bit Windows 7 otherwise you would not be using more than 3.25 GB ram. Check this out. Maybe a new motherboard is needed to max ram usage even in 64bit Windows 7.

Also, I just checked my ram usage and I am 2.79GB out of 4GB. I am not doing a whole lot right now. I am guessing most of it is being eaten by Firefox, Visual C++, and Thunderbird.

Maybe Richard is right. Maybe I am just not trying hard enough.

#8 Below is te full spec... Now based on my search, I will most definately will have to get a new mother board but the money is not there for that. So in the meantime will have to buy something that will do me wicked justice. Hopefully, I (might?) get some alternative results with the information below. That GGC for the help!

Brand
IntelModelBOXDP35DPM

CPU Socket
TypeLGA 775

CPU Type
Core 2 Quad

FSB
1333/1066MHz

Chipsets North Bridge
Intel P35

Number of Memory Slots
4×240pin

Memory Standard
DDR2 800

Maximum Memory Supported
8GB

Channel Supported
Dual Channel

PCI Express x16
1

PCI Express x1
3

PCI Slots
3

Storage Device PATA
1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max

Storage Device SATA 3Gb/s
6