upgrade for gaming. need advice

[nonamme]

Hi!

I currently have:
ASUS P4S800, Intel P4 3.0 Mhz, ATI Radeon X850 Pro 256mg, 768 mg RAM, Maxtor 6Y120PO 120GB 7200rpm, POwer supply 430 watt


Planning to upgrade to:
-- ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel $195
-- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 $316
-- XFX GeForce 7950GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP ExTreme Edition Video Card $290
-- CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) $246
total: $1047


2 reasons:
-- I want to play Gothic 3 (curently takes 3-4 min to load and runs totally slow at lowest settings)
-- I don't want to get back to upgrade for gaming purposes this year

I'm not a pro and chose the components only by reading reviews - please advice:

Question 1: are these components the best solution for gaming for the money (i can spend upto $1,400)?
Question 2: should I get a new hard drive as well?



Thanks,
Jim

 

[SciFiMan]

When are you buying? When do you see Vista in your future? I only ask because if you can hold out a month, it is likely that a $300 DX10 card will equal or outperform a 7950 in DX9 games. Plus you will be a bit more future proof. Just a thought.

 

[-silencer-]

For starters, load times in games have a lot to do with hard drive transfer rates. That's where RAID 0 makes a huge difference. Two Western Digital 320GB drives for a total of $180 would help out there. Or, two less expensive 7200rpm drives, but the 320GB is the best bang for the buck. Also, with RAID 0 you'll basically have one 640GB drive.. so partition away..

Also, if it's mainly gaming you're into, save money by getting the E6300 and then spend a little more for the 8800GTS. You can always overclock the E6300 beyond E6600 speeds later.. if you buy the 7950GX2, you're stuck with DX9 no matter what you do. When Crysis, Alan Wake, etc come out later this year, you'll be glad you have a G80 card.

 

[nonamme]

thank you much for your replies!! I may be a little over the budget , but do you think it makes sense to spend additional $150 to still get E6600 and overclock it say upto 3.2 or so, I mean - will it really show different permormance gaming wise comparing with E6300 overclocked to 2.4???

and also I have 430W power supply Antec TPII-430, should I get a new one or this one is ok?

thanks!