Honestly i was not trying to flame but i wanted him to understand that 320megs of ram on 1 video card was fail 4 years ago!!If the card only has 320 megs of ram thats all it can load 320megs... That is what both cards get to use 320meg that's it.Also i imagine that you screen is at least 1680x1050 so most games are fail lag everywhere.If he decides that gaming is what he is after with a budget the first thing is a video card since that is where the gaming happens.If he decides that he needs more cpu for applications not gaming then get the cpu first. If this is mostly to game with i would first get a nice video card and ditch the two 320 meg ones.You will notice a huge difference then overclock that cpu to 3 at least and all games will be silky smooth.
Hrmmm, back when the 8800's were released they were very competitive at gaming resolutions below 1600x1200, which alot of gamers use.
You also need to remember that the 8800 GTS was a midrange card, never meant for the high end segment. Was nice competition to the 2900XT at resolutions up to where memory bandwidth becomes a issue(right around the 1600x1200 and above with AA, etc. to high settings) Granted not alot of people put their displays up that high so the card you labeled as 'fail' was beating out ATI's higher end offerings. If this is fail sh*t, I'll pick the fail cards all the time, gives me another 100$ or more to put into a faster processor or more memory :D
The 8800 GTS overclocked pretty decently and had the best price/performance when they came out. I myself bought one for those exact reasons, they were the best of their price point at the time.
It's an alright score, definitely not high end, but definitely not fail that mad labeled it as.