Just curious if anyone here has enough technical savvy to talk a bit of hardware. I'm curious how someone can find out true bottlenecks of what is holding a system back. Also, even if a system can run a new 512MB video card when they're released, how would you know that the max potential of that card would be utilized? I mean, how can you tell that you aren't have power to spare that you could never use because of your processor or ram or motherboard???

That would be a nice vid card zeplin, but we all have the potential of maxing it out, though i hope we don't end up with freezers in our comps =P

Well, maybe I don't know any better, but I'm not too impressed with the difference of my 128mb card and the reviews of the 256s. With that, I'd figure all special effects would be on and at really high resolutions, but as an example, they're run of Doom3 isn't maxed, so why get one? My card allows me to run medium detail at 1024x768 with shadows, and it looks okay at 20fps. If I up it to 1280x1024 it drops to 15fps. I hate it. I'm uncompromising when it comes to detail, so I really hate reviews that only stress frames per second. Thats all nice, but different cards yield different quality atmosphere, and I want the best of both worlds... Call me greedy.

the amount of ram in the card is only going to enable you to have more textures and at a higher quality.
whats more important for performance is the speed of the ram... and obviously, the power of the GPU(s) in the card.

personally, i think 3d games have become pointlessly bloated with eye candy that requires ever more insane amounts of hardware to run it.. but without adding anything to the gameplay.

You should try Farcry then. Atmosphere is as much part of a story as the story itself. But I won't completely disagree with you, many games are seriously hurting. There are so few out now that really take the cake, and I find myself looking back to oldies but goodies. These are games I can't get enough of, but they are abandoned by game makes which I think is the greatest mistake. These were the reasons people got them in business, and they repay us by forgetting. Most of the sequels to these pale in comparison, and I feel sorry for people who rave about them when they have no clue about what preceded.

X-Wing
Tie Fighter
Darklands
X-COM
Kingpin (mostly for multiplayer)

This is why I like PS2. :D

As far as I know, Video Card memory is dedicated to store video cards prosesses (and this saves internal memory for other things, and it saves bandwith since the memory chips are ON the card that calculates graphics).

In the most of todays games 128MB of graphics memory is sufficient to store the textures etc.

Doom 3 will run faster and better looking on a 256mb card (of the same type/GPU). Because you have to use compressed textures wich looks less detailed (like JPEG vs. BMP). If you use uncomressed textures with 128mb ram you'll notice a slowdown because the computer starts to use the main memory for the textures (and unless you have some megabytes free here, you'll start to use the harddrive SWAP... and that SUX)

A 512MB vidcard will not speed up your system at all. The extra vid memory is nothing more then a sales gimmick. Even Doom3 does not use that many textures. A 128MB card is plenty right now and if you are looking to buy for the long term buy a 256MB card instead. 512MB is a complete waste of money.

As to your origional question There is no special program to find out bottlenecks as they are not the same every time. If you post your current computer and what you want to do with it we can help you upgrade it for your needs.

Doom 3's highest settings are "only recommended with 512 MB video memory". But as The Picard says, it's better to have a good graphics chip than extra graphics memory .

The Anandtech and Tom's Hardware guys shows us that the CPU is the biggest limit on their HIGH-END machines. But this depends on the whole system. The chepest DELL Computers for example have bottlenecks in graphics hardware.

Yeah, I used to buy Dell computers, but wisened up later and built this one that I use now. I already knew about the compression methods and how that slows things up, but the speed of the memory was the part that peaked my intrigue. Most likely I'll get a 256 card when the prices fall. Call me stupid, but I just love athmospheric games, so I'm willing to toss the buckazoids in. I know some guys at a major retail store I can get this stuff at for cost anyway, so that helps.
I own a ps2 also, and used to have vice city on it. When I got it for computer since the ps2 kept locking up, I wasn't regretful. It is WAY better on computer with 32bit graphics at 1600x1200!