Actually, you MIGHT be better off with the graphics card with more memory on it.

That memory is used to store and swap textures onto your display, thus the more texture memory you have, the less stutter you should have....

Played this demo on multiple PCs (2 of my own) and it ran great for me. Stutters here and there when entering new areas, but otherwise runs ok on a tweaked recommended settings.

BTW, the two systems i run it on:

Athlon64 3800+ (Venice core, read SSE3)
2gigs CorsairXMS
Radeon X800XT 256MB (AGP)
2x WesternDigital Raptor (74GB) RAID-0
2x WesternDigital 1200JB (120GB) RAID-0
Hyundai 19" LCD display (8ms response)

And:
Athlon64 3400+ (socket754)
1gig Kingston HyperX
GeForce6600GT 256MB
WesternDigital 80gigger
Viewsonic Optiquest G90F 19" CRT

Game looks about equal on each monitor, and that LCD i nabbed was a GREAT buy from Newegg by the way, LOW response for something that size, and the colour is nice and vibrant, and no issues with brightness...

THat's different, some people just dont have internet access offered in their area, i know for a long time here in germany we couldn't get internet access here in the barracks, so i was just stuck with singleplayer gaming and the occasional lan party... still no internet access... yes, i have internet now, and yes it's DSL, but 3 years to get it up and running?? If Half-Life2 had been released 2 years ago, it would have taken me that long to be even able to play it!!

Something that bothers me deeply is the fact that you have to be ONLINE to play the Single-Player element of the game!! I know from personal experience that some people just dont have the internet, even if they can afford expensive computers and such (I know, I was one of them, i have an Athlon64 3400+ with a RadeonX800XT, and I didn't have internet for the 2 years i've been stationed in Germany...) That is an Injustice for people who want to play their Half-Life2 game and not have the internet in their homes... Here's hoping that someone at Valve wisens up to this fact and decides that you can play Single-Player without having to authenticate with Steam.

A very unhappy person with Valve right now (though I'm still gonna play the crap out of this game... I Pre-ordered Silver through Steam) Though with the news of this fiasco, I'm not sure im going to promote or help promote Steam now...