I got my graphics card today. Nothing crazy – just a $30 PNY 128 MB nvidia graphics card from newegg. I haven’t installed the nvidia drivers yet, but it has already been amazing in difference. The colors are brighter and more vibrant, the cpu, bereft of its need to draw the graphics runs faster, and windows don’t lag when I drag them around – a problem since Fedora switched to Cairo. There’s also no lag in SuperTux!
So just getting a 3D-capable card without even using proprietary drivers or changing any X.org settings allows the computer to run even better!
I can’t wait to see how well things like BZFlag run once I get the nvidia drivers installed.