What upgrades would you recommend?

Hey all, it’s been a few months over a year since I purchased my rig and I wondered if it was a good time to upgrade. Here’s my current setup:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz CPU
(No aftermarket heatsink since I don’t overclock)
2GB G.Skill RAM DDR2-800 5-5-5-15
EVGA 8800GTS 640MB video card
Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mobo
SeaSonic S12 650W PSU
Samsung SyncMaster 204B 1600x1200 32-bit monitor
Windows XP Pro SP3

Here are 2 possible upgrades I thought of:

1) Change the CPU to the E8400 or 8500, but keep the rest as is. The 8400/8500 are within a reasonable price range for me right now. Would either provide a noticeable improvement over the E6600?

2) Change up the motherboard to one that can handle 2 GPUs running in SLI mode (with or without a CPU upgrade). This is a far more expensive but would STALKER or Crysis, at the highest settings, run better than with my current GPU/mobo/CPU combination?

The hardware hasn't been invented to run (the poorly coded) Crysis at the highest settings at a reasonably high resolution.

As to the original question of what could be upgraded, that's a tougher question. I'd say the easiest and cheapest upgrade would be another gig or two or RAM (< $50). Even if you won't utilize all of it (given the 32-bit OS), you'll still max-out your memory. And DDR2 800 is so cheap that it'd be worth it.

With a 20" monitor, it wouldn't be worth it to buy a new mobo just so you can get SLI. You'll see a better performance bump with an upgrade to a higher single GPU like an HD4850 (~$150).

I have a system very similar to this and often wondered the same thing. A new CPU is what I'm looking at as well seeing that it would give the best perfomance increase per dollar spent IMO.

If your looking for gaming increases and can afford it, I would suggest and upgrade to a Radeon 4870 or an nVidia GX 268/280 and a new CPU. You would get just as good performance as an 8800GTS SLI for the same price but this way you reap the benefits of a faster CPU.

Interesting statistics. And based on the GPU charts the HD4850 provides a good increase and is within my price range to boot. A question for everyone though, would the E6600 have "sufficient brawn to provide the basic level the card requires"? It might since it's not much weaker than the E6750, and the E6750 worked well with all the high end cards in that article.

My other issue with upgrading the GPU is I'm not sure where to sell a used video card (or CPU for that matter). I bought the most expensive thing I could back then cause I was naive and didn't think about future upgrades. But I would rather sell it than keep it as a spare, especially while I can still get a decent price for it and before it becomes too outdated.

Your main goal is gaming. A faster GPU is the best investment to meet this goal. As to whether to go with nvidia or ATI, look through the game benchmarks in Tom's link I posted. Gen-speak, nvidia is faster at Crysis.

Buying a gpu is very much like buying a game console. You buy it for the games. Period.

Yup, I 2nd ebay. Also, try craigslist (free & local).