Mid-range AM2 cpu upgrade suggestion

[mychar]

Recently been trying out warhammer online, to find that the fps is lower than I expected.
I could play UT3 with my old 7600gt and only 1gb ram at decent settings.

Specs:
Athlon 3800+ (AM2) - single core
Geforce 8800gt 256mb
3gb ram (at 667 mhz)
"Asus m2n4 sli" mobo http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1266&l1=3&l2=101&l3=0&l4=0

Is it likely to be a cpu bottleneck, as warhammer online benefits from multithreaded processing?
The game starts off ok at 40-60 fps, then drops after about 10mins playing. Changing the settings has little effect.

Which dual core would give me similar performance for single thread applications (games)?
Looking at the X2 5000+ price range - ie cheap
Are there any particularly good value X2 upgrades you could suggest (I'm not too sure whether to go for higher clock speed or larger L2 cache).

Comments and advice are much appreciated.

 

[yomamafor1]

From the system requirement, it does look like multi-core may help. Therefore you can spend about 50~75 bucks for a decent dual core processor.

For instance, Athlon X2 5000 currently goes for 60 bucks, while 5400+ Black Edition goes for 77 bucks. IMO, both of those are very decent upgrades for your computer.

 

[amdfangirl]

Pretty much any Athlon X2 chip in the $50-$75 segment will help...

Larger caches only occur with some of the older Windsors which sell for about $100...