Right now I have an E2160 that isn't overclocked yet. Im wondering what would be the best upgrade for me right now. Should I get a new motherboard (the gigabyte p35) and new ram, (DDR2 800), or should i get a new q6600? Which would be a better upgrade for me? If I got the p35 board I'd plan on overclocking my E2160 to maybe 3.2.  I'm a heavy gamer, I don't do any video editing. Any suggestions would be appreciated
 
my specs:
 
asrock dual vsta 775 mb
2gigs ddr2 667
bfg 9600gt oc
450w psu
E2160 @ 1.8
 
Thanks alot

Well if you can afford it the most ideal upgrade would be:
 
OEM Q6600
P35 motherboard
Aftermarket Cooler
 
Then you can use your existing memory, run a 333 FSB at stock multiplier and get a 3.0GHz overclock out of the Q6600
 
And actually you could really do that on the stock cooler without any issues.

i have an aftermarket cooler, it's pretty nice too, so that shouldn't be a problem

What chipset motherboard are you running now? Can it support quad? And if yes, what's the fsb? Can it overclock the q6600?

At a minimum I'd go with the DS3L mobo and 2 gb's of DDR2 800 mHz CAS4 (4-4-4-12) stuff. This will allow you an easier OC to 2.8-3 gHz (333mHz FSB x 9 = 3 gHz). This should be easily attainable with the above setup. Not sure if you'll need to up the CPU voltage, but the mobo will be able to do it pretty easily. I know from reading on the Dual Vista mobo that your probably limited from 280-320 mHz FSB so you get a maximum of about 2.8 gHz, if your lucky enough. Your total upgrade would be about $100 for the mobo and about $30-35 (after MIR's) for quality CAS 4 Crucial or Corsair memory. This would total about $135 or so. Now I think your current setup you could get about 2.4-2.6 gHz easily and that would be about all. Now with the newer mobo and memory you could go higher, but not sure if you'd see much of a difference. I know that your PCI-e slot on the Dual Vista is limited to x4 speed, so that might be limited some things, but not too many. If you OC your current setup I think that would be the cheapest option for you. Not sure why you want the upgrade, unless your going to put in a q6600 into it. The setup you have is pretty good, might be a bit older, but is still not too bad. What's your reasoning for your upgrade?

My reason for upgrading is that I'm, as I stated, a heavy gamer, so I don't like it when i drop below 60fps. It's one of those things where I want to squeeze performance out, since also I plan on upgrading to a larger monitor soon with a larger resolution, and I don't want the CPU to be the limiting factor

Agreed.