CPU upgrade or SLI?

Hello and welcome to the forums mate  

You have a solid rig, GTX 260+E8400 is a solid combination,if i were u i wouldnt upgrade the CPU,because 3.0GHZ is plenty fast.

Also GTX 260 is a very good card,so i say keep both and don't upgrade it unless u play @ 1920x1200 or higher (which u will benefit from second card)

^What mazair said  .

The only thing I would mention is that I noticed that your video card is the XFX brand. If you've registered the card with them within 30 days after purchase, you get lifetime warranty AND you'll be allowed to overclock the card without voiding it. That's probably your best move for better performance, and hey, it's free and doesn't have any major drawbacks!  

GL

Ok that's good not having to part with my money   So CPU won't be bottlenecking GPU then? I play at 1680x1050 though I also have an HDTV connected that I run in dual monitor setup at 1680x1050, it would be good to use this in WiC and have the map up on that screen or even watch TV via tuner card while gaming and I guess SLI would be good for that, but probably not worth the extra $$ at this stage.

In regards to Avenger, unfortunately for me I live in New Zealand and the double lifetime warranty doesn't exist here and instead I get a mere 2 years warranty, although I think it does cover overclocking.

I might consider overclocking the CPU...

Oh well, that stinks. If that's the case than you may as well overclock it anyway, though. You'll be covered for two years, and once the warranty runs out there's nothing to void  . Overclocking the CPU might improve performance, but it would also void the warranty and might not bring much (or any) in-game performance boost. It's all up to you in the end, though.  

For 1680x1050 keep the GTX 260,my old 8800GTX is still kicking in that resolution for me  

I might give overclocking the graphics a go, although I'll double-check with XFX first and make sure the warranty does cover overclocking. Thanks for the help.

OC'ng the GPU wont make a noticeable difference in games.

It should with this card. Tom's recently did a review where it showed the OC'd GTX 260 tying or beating the performance of a GTX 280.

Get another GTX 260, unless you're willing to get a QX series processor or overclock a q6600 or q9450.

If you use Vista, play Crysis on All High on DX9 instead of DX10. Only use DX10 if you want to up some settings to Very High. From playing DX10 All High and playing DX9 All High, the DX9 path is much faster.

OC both the GPU and CPU, you'll see about a 12% average increase in performance, give or take... if you have good ventilation, you can bump the GPU up a lil bit (though they do run pretty hot) and you can rip the ever-living outta that E8400

God Bless

I'll try Crysis in DX9 though in-game performance now at All High is very acceptable, I'm really looking to see now if I can get it running with some AA smoothly, so hopefully it will be playable at 2x or 4x with DX9.

My case is a Lexa Blackline and the airflow seems to be quite good, I've got 120mm front intake, 120mm side intake and 80mm bottom intake plus 120mm rear exhaust and 80mm top exhaust and using the case's temp diodes the ambient temp inside case rarely exceeds 20 C, placed just above the graphics it's usually about 30 C and jumps to around 35 C-40 C in games. That's using the automatic fan control for the 260, in nTune I can manually adjust that and I ran it overlocked to about 1180|680 (RAM|GPU) and with the fan at 60% speed and stressing it with Crysis Very High + 4x AA the actual temp of it didn't exceed 65 C (that temp was monitored in nTune so is actual temp, not ambient).

I have heard good things about what you can do with an e8400 even on stock air, and I may get extra cooling if my OC'ing gets serious, but I'm still reluctant to break the warranty so I'll just hold off for now until I'm sure that it's necessary, but by then I'll probably SLI (or maybe a whole new card) and get a new processor.

I'll definitely give overclocking the GPU a try, any tips for a newbie?

Edit: Tried Crysis in DX9, I can now run at All High + 4xAA and is very playable. Thanks for the tip  

As i said u wont see a noticeable difference with OC'ng your GPU,but if u want to OC,then download RIVATUNER and follow this guide:
http://www.vaguetech.com/index.php?pageid=rt207