Upgrading either my CPU or graphics card. Help me choose!

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G

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I'm looking to buy either a new graphics card or a new CPU mostly to improve gaming performance.

I can currently play most games and maintain an average 30FPS at medium to mixed medium and high settings at 1280 x 720 resolution.

I can't run at a higher resolution due to the fact that my TV only supports up to 720p resolution.

I also currently can't afford to upgrade both my CPU and my graphics card at the same time, so I have to choose one or the other.

I either want to upgrade my CPU to an AMD FX-8350 4GHz eight-core CPU ($225 after tax), or upgrade my graphics card to a Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 XT 2GB GDDR5 card ($290 after tax, includes Tomb Raider 2013, BioShock Infinite, and FarCry 3: Blood Dragon)

After looking at my desktop's current hardware below, which upgrade would give me better gaming performance overall?

My desktop's current hardware specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz Quad-Core CPU (not overclocked, don't plan on overclocking it)
ASUS AMD Radeon HD 6770 1GB GDDR5 graphics card (not overclocked)
4GB (2 x 2GB) G.SKILL Ripjaws X-Series DDR3 1333MHz RAM
 
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dalmvern

dalmvern

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Jun 15, 2011
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Easy choice, the graphics card. Your processor does not have that much of an effect on frame rates. Your processor has almost identical performance to the one I have in my machine and because I have a GTX 660ti, I run almost all the games that I play on High/Ultra settings with a minimum of 60 FPS at 1920x1080 res.
 
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G

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I should also mention that I already own Tomb Raider 2013, so I could easily sell the Tomb Raider voucher for $40-$50, bringing the overall price of the graphics card down the about $240 after everything is said and done.
 
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G

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Will my current CPU bottleneck the 7870 Xt enough that I won't notice a performance gain from my HD 6770, or will I still notice a performance gain? Will the bottleneck make it not worth the $240-$290 upgrade?
 
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