Current system Intel C2D 8400 cpu, asus P5NE-SLI mb, Nvidia 9800GTX2, 4gig Corsair ram. Play on a 1680x1050 21" LCD screen (keeping) running on Win 7 64-bit Home Ed.

I play current popular FPS shooters (Black Ops/Crysis etc) mainly but they are the most demanding on graphics and cpu, and I like lots of frames/sec with eye candy on. I am a picky player and I like to have smooth gameplay in firefights.

Upgrade...I have an $800-900 (taxes inc) budget. Will need new 4 core cpu, mb, ram & vidcard. Would like hardware that's somewhat current (within last year) and update-able with faster cpus in the future. A motherboard with some good oc'ing settings would be nice. Vid card, I know it won't be top of the line, but something that's a good deal for the graphics. I'm not picky with companies, I'll go where the frames/sec are and maintain the 4gigs of ram.

If anyone on these forums, or MysteryByte staff can suggest a couple/few systems or components, let me know.

Thanks in advance..

I have the exact same processor. Do you have your E8400 o/c'd to 3.6 ghz. It's easy to do and will run great on stock cooler. had mine like that for almost a year. with no problems. I also had the 9800 GTX. I upgraded to a 5850 ATI card. My next major upgrade will be when Intel's Sandybridge hits the market yearly Jan. And I will proabably get another 5850 to crossfire. I think buying a new video card would be a good option to upgrade. I also play the Newest FPS at top settings. But black ops still has some serious bugs. A patch came out last week that made it playable. But not perfect. And good news is that a new patch shopuld be out before the end of the week for it to make it even better. Hopefully that helps you. Good luck.

Bsaed on you just needing a new CPU, MB, Ram and video card I threw this together from MB's store front here.

1x AMD Phenom II X6 1055T / 2.8 GHz - Socket AM3 - L3 6 MB $217.00
1x ASUS M4A89TD-PRO/USB3 890FX SATA 6Gb/s 2USB3.0 xFire GbL HD Audio 1394 $214.00
1x CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 $121.00
1x Sapphire RADEON HD6850 PCI-E 1024MB DDR5 $217.00

SubTotal 769.00
HST 115.35
Total $884.35

This gives you a 6 core CPU, 6GB/s Sata's, 2 x USB 3.0, 4GB Ram and a decent video card.
This assumes you have everything else to build it. If so you can then turn around and sell the old parts to recover some of the cost or towards a new monitor(or another one..dual display ftw!), case, or SSD etc.
Also for $20 you can upgrade the CPU to the 1075T for 0.2GHz more.

SideWinderDX

You could alse get a X4 970 processor for the same price and OC easy to 4GHz (if I can do it anyone can do it!) if you don't need all 6 cores.

a 6 core now would be great if you're going to sit on it for a couple years while games and regular programs catch up. for now sticking with a quad core that's faster in "fewer threaded" applications would be best.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

1 16410 INTEL QUAD CORE i5-760 2.80Ghz 8MB 95W LGA1156 TurboBoost - Retail Box $234.00
1 15548 CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 (MB 1YR) MFG Lifetime $121.00
1 16215 GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-1GI GTX460 256Bit DDR5-1024MB 2DVI,1Mini HDMI (1YR MB Warranty) $269.00
1 15928 Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 PCIex16 xFire, 4DDR3, 2USB3, SATAII, GbL, HD Audio $146.00


All Prices are listed in Canadian Dollars.
Applicable shipping charges are not included.
Taxes have been calculated for: Nova Scotia SubTotal 770.00
HST 115.50
Total $885.50

Way to many AMD fanbois here

Upgrade went flawless after I picked up my parts at MB on Friday. Within 1.5 hours had my other components out and new ones in. Win7 picked up everything new, installed drivers etc for it and every game I play runs perfectly with all the eye candy.

Ended up going with:

Phenom II x6 1075T cpu
4 gig Kingston 1600 ram
Sapphire Radeon 6950
ASUS 890GT Pro motherboard

nice setup! curious to how Windows index rates your hardware. Also curious to how that whopper of a vid card performs. Pretty sweet!

I am patiently waiting the new 990 chipset. I am hoping I dont get grey before AMD releases it.

do up some build shots man!

Because of my slower ATA and SATA hd's Win7 still rates it as a 5.9, but all other specs besides the drives are scored 7.8 to 7.9

The Radeon 6950 videocard - I have cranked everything in catalyst and max'd the settings in Black Ops and Battlefield BC2 with DX11 (playing at 1680x1050) and I can't make it hitch or lose framerate. War Tapes sound quality in BC2 with max'd graphics make for a fun gaming experience. I even reinstalled Crysis and Crysis Warhead to check out the graphics I couldn't play with my previous setup.

yeah - the only thing ya need now is an SSD!

Nice choices - do you overclock?

I have one of the Seagate Momentus SSD's as my main drive but the other is a slower drive, which pulls the score down. No biggie.

I did overclock my previous processor (C2D 8400) but currently don't see a need to oc this processor or videocard..yet! I think the version of the processor I got doesn't lend itself to oc'ing easily, or it has to be done manually. The motherboard has oc features, I just haven't had the time to investigate all of them yet.

Or a 1080 monitor so you can really put that 6950 to work...

Crank up the AA to unbelieveable levels of unbelieveability!