best mid-range card for an aging system?

[brblx]

wow.

so i just said screw it and bought a 560ti. i had helped a friend put together an i7/12gb/570 machine and just got the itch to go a little big (for me). and he works for best buy, so i got instant gratification while still slightly beating newegg's price.

everything runs flawlessly. shogun2 went from stuttering on medium-low to smooth at max. i can't believe how well this is doing considering i still only have 2gb of memory and a five year old c2d.

 

[brblx]

fwiw i ran the shogun2 benchmark with fully maxed ('ultra') settings with all DX9 effects (going to upgrade to win7 when i upgrade the ram). 30fps.

pretty damn good, imo. i'm still playing on high, it's faster and i don't see much diff.

need to reinstall crysis, this thing should crush it.

if my computer runs this well with 2 gigs and an old ass processor, what the hell are people building 12gb high-end i7 systems for?