Cpu and Video Card Bottlenecking

yes it is slightly being a bottleneck y not oc ur cpu a litte bit. no need to replace ur mobo pciex16 slot is enough u wont see any difference in performance with a pcie 2.0.

Your 9800GTX is a very good card, but it is not the fastest. SLI/crossfire configurations are even faster. I think your cpu is resonably well matched to your vga card.
There is always a bottleneck. A faster cpu will increase your FPS. A faster vga card will increase your fps. 4gb of ram can help. The question is how much do you get for upgrading each, and how much do you get for your dollar?
For games, it is usually the vga card. In your case, I don't think an upgrade will be significantly better unless the new card is in the GTX280/4870X2 class, or sli. Then your cpu should be in the E8400 3.0 or better category.

Another consideration is how good do you need to be for best possible gaming?
Read this and see where you fit:
http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=vga_charts

As to pcie 1.0 or 2.0 it is not a factor. The capacity is helpful to only the very fastest 2.0 cards, and even then, it may help by only 1-2%. Don't change your mobo for that reason.

How much should i overclock my cpu to? what is a good program to use?

Also, if its a HP, i will need a custom bios flash correct?

Just leave it. Any bottlenecking is probably very minor. Also, even if the cpu is bottlenecking it, if it's above 30-40fps, who cares? And if it matters to you, and you want the absolute optimum fps for each part, just turn up the AA/AF a little.

I think most people are too concerned about bottlenecking because it usually doesn't matter much. Only time it's really important is if your cpu is holding a game to 15fps, no video card will save you (and vice versa).

It's very true what you point out, and let me add the actual importance of knowing if your system bottlenecks your video card:

Video cards are not a "cheap" component in most cases and go by hand with CPU costs, so you'll be spending a lot of bucks for a piece of hardware, right? Now, what if that new piece of hardware doesn't perform on par with the rest of the system (a bottleneck)? That tells me you threw a few bucks to the toilet since you're not getting 100% of what you paid for. Now, some scenarios are omg-bad and some (like you point out) are not. So, talking about money here, i'd say it's always a good question to ask if your current CPU/MoBo/RAM will bottleneck your Video card, cause you'll be spending money on that piece of hardware that you might not need at all, or just need something of a "lesser upgrade".

Now, there's a lot of "but"s and "if"s in there mixed up, but i hope you get the main idea XD

Esop!

PS: Sorry for the off-topic xP