so right now my cpu is a bit old, its a amd athlon x2 2ghz dual core 3800+ with 2gb ddr400 ram, (cant even use ddr2 ram) but i have a decent card BFG 9800 GT OC, and so far thanks to that card i have been able to play pretty much any game on max settings on my 19 inch screen except gta iv, and certain newer games might get a tiny bit of slow down like the last remnant, but yeah i will be able to spend 200 dollars about to upgrade, if i upgrade my cpu id need to buy new motherboard AND ram so i dont know if thats more worth it compared to buying a even more heavy duty graphic card like sapphire 4890 1gb or gtx 280 1gb, what you guys think? personally i dont think the cpu ram upgrade is worth it compared to graphic card
Likewise, if I had your system and I had $200 to spend, I'd buy a cheap but solid lga775 board like the DS3L or the P5Q for about $80, and then get a Core 2 Duo e7400 for about $120.
Then you can get 2x2gb DDR2-800 memory sticks for as little as $30 on newegg.
Thats $30 over budget but definitely worth it. A 9800 gt is a fine card, and in my opinion it's the rest of your system thats struggling. Anything more than a 9800gt will be bottlenecked anyways.
GPU prices are always falling, and you can always upgrade later. The longer you wait the better deal you will get.
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