I'm talking about on 
ATI HD4550
 AMD Athlon X3 3.0 GHZ
1 gig of DDR 3 memory, 
 
And I'm running Gears of Wars maxed, Sims 3 Maxed, Modern Warfare 2 maxed, etc. I'm going to try NFS shift also.
But, only because I never turn Anti Aliasing on, or...I may have it on 2X or something. But heck you don't really need it when your playing high action games like Modern Ware 2, your too busy to notice jagged edges in the game.
 
But, I know I'll need to get another gig of ram soon, most likely a 2 gig chip soon. Anyway, so what are some of your specs when running games? Or my question really is, what games were you surprised that you were able to run on high quality or ALMOST all high?

Your not maxing out anything. Maxed out means full anti aliasing and 60 frames per second. You should have at least 4X AA to clear most of the jaggies. Also it depends on your display resolution, it's easier to run lower resolution.

I play Gears of War maxed out on my Xbox

ATI 5870
AMD Phenom 2 x6 Ruining @ 4.0ghz
8 gig of DDR3 ( 2x 4gig sticks) at ~1600mhz, and 9-9-9-20-T1  timings
 
Can pretty much run everything on max with aa, and af usually maxed out as well to 8x and 16x. So am not really surprised by it lol.

games have been easy to run on PC since 2006/07,( or since the release of the PS3), where 90% of the games became multiplatform and the race for who has the better engine became stagnant thanks to the standardization of engines such as UE 3.  
 
A PC gamer who is low on cash or just simply "wants to keep things simple" could technically run anything up to now (and until the death of the current gen consoles) on "equivalent-to-better" hardware relative to those consoles; i.e. a Core2Duo, 2~4GB RAM, and an 8800GTX. 
 
This is why I simply do not respect people who say PC gaming is too expensive, or people who just throw the $3000 number around to push their unfounded arguments; and that happens sometimes even on the bombcast. Because this shows that they do not do any research on the field of PC gaming. That's fine, don't do your research... but don't go ahead and make an ass out of yourself in forums or on-air or whatever.   
 
As an example, I sent my 8800GTX ive had since 07 to one of my community's members for free, and he's been running every single game out now without any problems and mostly maxed out or at least better looking than their console counterparts. (BFBC2, Mass Effect2..etc)
 
I never understood why people hate on a platform because it gives you choice and freedom. Choice is bad, mmkay? Yeah I'd much rather stick to my xbox (which, yes, I do own) with its totalitarian xbLive system and exorbitantly priced tiny hard drives.  
 
The 2TB of games,music and porn I have on my PC are all shit, Steam is shit, ventrilo is shit, being able to play all my games on PC while on the couch with an xbox controller and hooked up to a 46" 120Hz HDTV and 2 other 1920x1200 monitors is shit, being able to play your games in windowed mode at twice the resolution of HDTVs while being able to click out of the game and browse the web is shit, being on ventrilo and steam in constant communication with your friends whether you are in game or not is shit...everything is shit. :) 
 
To the OP: Good fucking job, get the most out of that rig!

Napoelon/Empire: Total War on High/Ultra with my-
 @warxsnake said:

Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, and an 8800GTX.

" I play Gears of War maxed out on my Xbox "

i have a  
2.3 ghz quad core. Q8200 i think 
a 5770 1 gig 
and 4 gigs of DDR2 RAM 
 
i can run basically anything but not with alot of AA

" @Axxol: lol "

" @Axxol said:

" I play Gears of War maxed out on my Xbox "

Highest settings every time oh yeah baby. "

As an example, I sent my 8800GTX ive had since 07 to one of my community's members for free, and he's been running every single game out now without any problems and mostly maxed out or at least better looking than their console counterparts. (BFBC2, Mass Effect2..etc)

"

Your not maxing out anything. Maxed out means full anti aliasing and 60 frames per second. You should have at least 4X AA to clear most of the jaggies. Also it depends on your display resolution, it's easier to run lower resolution.

"

" @HitmanAgent47 said:

"

Your not maxing out anything. Maxed out means full anti aliasing and 60 frames per second. You should have at least 4X AA to clear most of the jaggies. Also it depends on your display resolution, it's easier to run lower resolution.

"

Why is 60 FPS "maxed out"? "

" @TMThomsen said:

" @HitmanAgent47 said:

"

Your not maxing out anything. Maxed out means full anti aliasing and 60 frames per second. You should have at least 4X AA to clear most of the jaggies. Also it depends on your display resolution, it's easier to run lower resolution.

"

Why is 60 FPS "maxed out"? "

very simple, 60fps is the meeting point between general inability to sense a higher fps, meaningful performance improvement, required resources and logic.   basically 60 looks good and theres no point going much higher unless it's a specific requirement of the individual.  This rule applies mostly to FPS and racing games but it does bleed over. "

I've never ever considered AA to be part of the max settings thing. It's possible to run higher than max settings if AA is part of the equation due to cards having more options than shown in the official control panels. Unless you count only what's available in the game's options screen as "settings".
 
Then you get to "what's considered higher". 16x supersampling may preform worse than "32x SLI AA" in most games, but depending on the game might look worse also.

" @jadeskye said:

" @TMThomsen said:

" @HitmanAgent47 said:

"

Your not maxing out anything. Maxed out means full anti aliasing and 60 frames per second. You should have at least 4X AA to clear most of the jaggies. Also it depends on your display resolution, it's easier to run lower resolution.

"

Why is 60 FPS "maxed out"? "

very simple, 60fps is the meeting point between general inability to sense a higher fps, meaningful performance improvement, required resources and logic.   basically 60 looks good and theres no point going much higher unless it's a specific requirement of the individual.  This rule applies mostly to FPS and racing games but it does bleed over. "

60 FPS is fucking sexy, that's why. "

I was surprised to play Mass Effect 2 on mid-high settings.

" @drummerboykhari:  720p isn't that high, I mean for pc games X768 is really like the second lowest setting if I remember correctly since I don't use that setting. When you go use X1050, X1080, X1200, X1600 it gets slower with higher resolutions.

@TMThomsen: Usually, however these days, for games like metro 2033, I don't see how that is possible with AA. It's an old pc definition years ago, when ppl say they can't max out crysis yet, that's exactly what they mean, full AA and 60 frames. I suppose getting near 60 is still good enough, you can still say you can almost max out your game. My point is alot of ppl uses the definition maxed out using minimal AA, 30 frames per second, that's not a pc definition of maxed out.   "

 @HitmanAgent47:  If your "maxing out" your game, it means your playing at the highest settings, without taking into account the performance of the game. Your maxing out to see how well your pc performs.

" I was surprised to play Mass Effect 2 on mid-high settings. "

" @WEGGLES: DAMMIT MAN! TAKE MY SIDE! TOGETHER WE CAN RULE THE GALAXY. MAXING OUT = PURE SETTINGS "

" @WEGGLES: DAMMIT MAN! TAKE MY SIDE! TOGETHER WE CAN RULE THE GALAXY. MAXING OUT = PURE SETTINGS "

" @TMThomsen:   It's a great frame rate, looks smooth etc.   Maxing out is having a game run it at ultra high settings smoothly. "

" @WEGGLES said:

" @TMThomsen:   It's a great frame rate, looks smooth etc.   Maxing out is having a game run it at ultra high settings smoothly. "

But 100 FPS is smoother than 60 FPS, so why is 60 FPS considered "maxed out" by "the pc community"? "

I can max out Max Payne 2 on a Lifebook that has around 500mb of RAM and a 1.2 ghz processor.
 
Beat that.

NFS Shift is badly optimized, it lags on my computer (i5/750,GTX260). I think its more a console game.

I run most things out today at max settings no sweat. Got an Intel E8500 Core2 (dual core) 3.16GHz CPU, 4GB DDR2 1066MHz RAM, and a 9800GTX+. Built it at the end of 08 and it's still doing me fine, I'll probably build another rig in about a year and a half but only because I love building PCs, not because I really need it lol :) I swap between playing on my PC and my 360.
 
I don't run the super hard out games on max of course (Crysis and Metro 2033 but come on those ones are crazy), but definitely the multiplatform ones.

I can play Runescape with the settings AT MAX. 
 
Hell yeah.