THIS HAS GONE TOO FAR

[Chojin]

So okay, here are my basic system specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64
MB: Something good i forget, it has an nVidia chipset thing too
VID: ATI Radeon x800GT (Powercolor brand, PCIex)
RAM: 2 GB Corsair value-select DDR 400
OS: Windows XP Professional x64 / Windows XP Professional

And in city of villains I still regularly get about 15-20 FPS in most areas of the game, running in 1280x960 res and medium settings (with world detail all the way down to 50%). My other games run fine but seem like they could be running way better as well. I just re-formatted and have my dual windows OSes living on their own partitions with plenty of room to grow and spread root, and I try to water them every day.

3DMark tests before I reformatted would yield about 15 FPS on the "with-graphics-card-enabled" tests and 2 FPS on the "processor-only" tests. Is my problem that I should have gone with an nVidia card since my mobo uses nForce technology as well? Is powercolor just a horribly gay brand? Will Dick Tracy make it to the burning house before it's too late?

I'm just looking for answers here. I spent a lot of money on upgrades and they don't seem to be helping as much as I think they should be.