Upgrading PC

[Sniper-Fox]

Sup!

I have $400-500 to spend on my pc upgrades. I want to upgrade my vid card hella badly but I'm a bit worried about bottlenecking. I know for sure the PSU needs to be upgraded. What would you recommend to upgrade for my PC? I game on a 22" 1680x1050 res Monitor and would like to get pretty decent FPS (60+) in the games I play now; World at War, L4D, CoD4-Upcoming : L4D2, Bad Company 2, CoD6 MW2, and Assassin's Creed 2. One thing I'm concerned about is the PCI-E Slot in the Mobo, it covers the SATA ports if i get a GTX 260 so I'm here to ask you for recommendations.

My Main concerns: PSU, GPU, Mobo ///CPU (Least, just can't oc with OEM Mobo)


Right Now i see this as a great deal::http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127429

Thx PPL


My PC Specs:
HP M8400F

Processor
Type AMD Phenom X4 9500 / 2.2 GHz
Multi-Core processor technology Quad-Core
64-bit processor Yes
Windows 7 64

RAM
Installed Size 6 GB / 8 GB (max)
4GB Readyboost
Technology DDR2 SDRAM
Memory speed 800 MHz
Memory specification compliance PC2-6400

HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 360GB X2: 720GB total.

Video Card
Asus 8500GT G86 256MB

Power Supply 300 Watts

Motherboard: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c00906137

 

[Kraynor]

That much cash should net you a ~500W Corsair PSU and an ATI 4850 quite easily. Probably a 4870. This is the route I'd recommend.

 

[hefox]

I think you should try first to change only the PSU and video card. See how everything is running and then if you need to change to the motherboard and CPU.
Corsair 550W and the video from your link are really good options.

 

[amnotanoobie]

The 4850 should run ok with your cpu, coupled with the psu I think you're good to go. I can't give a reliable ballpark figure on the average fps you could expect. As hefox said, try the 4850 (or 4870?) and the psu change first then decide if it'd be worth it to upgrade your mobo and/or cpu.

* I think the cpu bottleneck issue is a bit overrated since your cpu is fairly recent and fairly good enough, buying a tier higher of a vid card would have an appropriate increase in fps. You'd probably just be losing 10~15fps, but that really wouldn't matter much if you're running at 70~90fps.