GT 520 vs GTX 295

Which will run this game better when paired with my Intel Core 2 Duo processor that my dad refuses to admit is the actual problem?

Don't know, but trying to run this game on a dual core is murder in big fights, especially a core 2 duo.

GTX 295 and it's not even close. Heck you could even disable SLI on the 295 and it'll still walk all over the 520.

GTX 295 is better for planetside 2 but you will have a bottleneck between cpu and gpu. See if you can overclock the cpu.

Yeah, the 295, but its not a good solution either.

PS2 doesn't really play well with SLI or Crossfire, so even the 295 won't see it's true potential, but it will still be faster than the 520. I have the 285, which is similar to what a single GPU core of a 295 is (a 295 is actually 2x Geforce 275's on the same board but with slightly slower clockspeeds). It's alright, but I would not waste money on one if he hasn't bought one already. The Geforce 200 series is actually pretty competitive in the fillrate department, but it just doesn't have the shader power that its successors have, and PS2 uses a lot of shader calls. As a result, you have to turn a lot of the settings to low for it to perform okay. I've played on a Geforce 560Ti and a Radeon 5850 and they're much, much faster than my 285 due to their substantial shader performance lead.

I would highly advise your father to consider what you're proposing, and that's upgrade the CPU.

You'll need a new motherboard as well since thats an old LGA 775 socket. Any Q series quad you find new will probably still be stupid expensive and unless its a custom build your mobo probably cant handle a quad.

Best thing you can do is try to get it up to around 4ghz and stick to smaller fights, even with a better GPU. My kids run 9800 Gt 1Gb cards and Athlon II x2 CPUs. They do ok in smaller fights but their CPUs lag them in bigger battles. I have both at 3.7ghz on stock coolers. Id push them to 4 or higher if we had better cooling.

The 9800 does a fine job of rendering the game on low-medium settings. The only thing you'll lack is the ability to easily see cloaked Infiltrators on low, but its easier to see everything else.