New computer, is this any good?

[Ancient Demon]

So I recently bought a new computer because my old one (bought in 2004) no longer suited my needs:

AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core Processor 2.20 GHz
4 GB DDR 2 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce G100
640 GB HD
20" 1600 x 900 LCD monitor
Windows Vista Home Premium 64

Altogether it came out to $900 CDN (about $750 US).

I thought this was high end, but most of the newer games I've tried run slow or choppy at highest settings. What could be the bottleneck here? Should I have sought something better?

[katmai]

The video card is rebranded 9400, so might be cause.

[Grey Fox]

Vista
Video card

Yes.

[Caliga]

Vista

Vista 64 is definitely faster than XP in my experience.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I've never seen any issues with Vista 64.  I have issues with cruddy video cards in the later stages of Fall from Heaven.  Get a new video card.

[Grey Fox]

Vista

Vista 64 is definitely faster than XP in my experience.

You mean when playing, let's say COD4, you get more Frames under Vista 64 then XP for the same hardware?

[viper37]

Vista

Vista 64 is definitely faster than XP in my experience.

I have to agree on that.
And I tried to booting thing too, same hardware, mostly the same softwares, dual boot XP and Vista64, XP is twice as long.

[viper37]

GF, once the drivers are updated, you should get the same speed or more with most games, provided you have recent (< 1year) hardware.

Don't know about Win7, suspect it's similar.

[Barrister]

I think your graphics card is suspect.

[Mr.Penguin]

I have just bought a similar size rig, but with a Geforce 9800 GT card and Windows XP. However this was considered the "family" version, not a high end rig...

[Ancient Demon]

Yes, I think I'll consider looking for a better video card.