Upgrade the vidcard or cpu?

Hi guys,

I currently own a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition, 4GB OCZ Platinum DDR2-800 + ECS Geforce 9600GT 512MB.
I'm about to order a new 22" LCD and want to play as much games as possible on native 1680x1050.
I know my current rig will have trouble with some newer games so i'm willing to upgrade, but only 1 component and i'm in the dark as to what upgrade would give me the best performance boost : the vidcard or cpu?
The reason i'm asking is because i was thinking of upgrading my vidcard to something like the 9800GT/GTS 250 but i'm afraid my CPU will keep it from running at full potential. So maybe it's better to upgrade the CPU to bring the most out of my 9600GT?
Could you also state what brand/model you would recommend? (for vidcards i like to stick to Nvidia)

Any advice greatly appreciated,
Sunchaser.

Card. Your CPU is fine but your card is the weakest at that rez

9800GT/GTS 250 are same or only a bit faster than old 8800GT and coming from my own experience it is not enough if you want eye candy enabled. You need something better to see real fps increase. I don´t know about your PSU and case (size) but this time and sticking with nvidia if I was you I would go for GTX 260 (216)...really nice price downfall. In US prices start at 150 USD...
Your CPU is not that bad (same level as intel e6650)...oc it and you should be good for a while.

Uhmmm, the 5000BE is NOT a E6650. I doubt its even a 6300.

You don't state what your BE is overclocked to, or if it is at all. Seeing as you have a good overclocking chip, I'd start there. Overclock it as far as you can, then buy a nice GPU. A 4770 is a great idea, as is a cheap 9800GTX/GTS250. A GTX260 will work as well, but your starting to get ahead of your CPU and the requirements for 16x10.

Good idea from 4744545b: Have a go at overclocking the CPU, but do plenty of research first, do not just jump in or you could wreck the system.
I disagree about the GTX260 though, I would go for that, especially if your motherboard can support a faster CPU: AM2+ and AM3 chips will run in AM2 boards but if you decide to take that route you MUST check with the motherboard maker to see if a newer chip is supported.
Tmo_12 is wrong, only the very fastest cards; HD4870X2 and GTX295 would suffer any falloff in performance if paired with a PCI-E 1.0 or 1.1 slot, as long as they are run at X16 speed.

Yeah you can run any card no problem...and just in case you read into it you board might be Pcie 1.0...the difference is that 2.0 boards allow for more bandwith...even cards like the GTX 260 and ATI 4870 can't max out a 1.0 pcie bus so your just fine...

Thanks again for the info, will take a look at that site!

SC

Faster, but only if you can get yours up to 3.3GHz. If you have yours at stock, its nowhere near as fast. This is why I said to overclock it, you'll get a nice increase in speed. Seeing as he said its already overclocked to 3.0GHz, he's probably already around the 64/65 chips. This should be enough CPU for most of todays games.