Upgrade advice needed

[fool_of_a_took]

Hiya,

I'm looking for some advice regarding upgrading my system. The current specs are:

cpu: E6600
gfx: 8800GTS 640mb
ram: 4gb DDR2 800mhz (cheap mixed brand)
os: vista Home Premium 32bit
mobo: I forget, but not a great one

Currently nothing is overclocked, and my cpu cooler is stock.

Basically when I configured and bought this pc over a year ago, this spec was ok, but now I'm struggling to get playable fps with the quality settings I want.

I tried overclocking the gfx card using a walkthrough on this site and RivaTuner, but the gains weren't worth the instability.

Now I'm looking at two options, both of which I may end up doing:

1) Get a new cooler and overclock the cpu

2) Upgrade the gfx card to a 9800GTX+ or a GTX260

My real question is this - is it worth upgrading the gfx card or should I gain enough with the overclock?

Thanks in advance

 

[mi1ez]

It's probably worth doing both. The cost of a good enough cooler to get the E6600 a fair bit higher is not going to be a lot, and that would help give a new graphics card more freedom to breath as it were.

 

[heretic_novelty]

^^ I agree with mi1ez. I would do both, upgrading a heatsink is not a big investment in price, but in performance for piece of mind that youre not going to cook eggs on your OC'd processor, then I would invest money into a good GPU. IMO I would go with the GTX 260.

 

[fool_of_a_took]

It's probably worth doing both. The cost of a good enough cooler to get the E6600 a fair bit higher is not going to be a lot, and that would help give a new graphics card more freedom to breath as it were.

When you say "freedom to breathe", I've heard similar in that the cpu can limit the Gfx card, but what sort of limits are these? Am I limiting my current card by keeping the processor at stock speeds?

and thanks!