Have you tried adjusting the background fps to improve the foreground performance? It sounds like they are all running at maxfps and that is draining your performance. You should be able to set foreground 60 and background 30 (or lower to improve foreground) and not see any adverse effects.

Also, running 3 instances at full fps is very taxing on the power demands of the card. Your card may be asking for more power than is available => it may be throttling performance on top of everything else. 8800gt needs a dedicated 30A of 12v at max load fyi. Single 12v rail power supplies are great for the newer MB/video card combos.



Hope this helps.