Upgrading Advice

If you have the money an i7 setup will last you a bit longer.

Upgrading the 650i setup, will have one drawback, the 6x0i chipset doesn't natively support the 45nm Yorkfield Intel Quads. I'm assuming you are talking about the 3ghz Q9650, because it's certainly not worth the money to buy QX6850.

Alternatively- 3rd option. Pick up an E8400 , 4gigs memory and a GTX280. This combo will last you a bit and shouldn't cost as much as first 2 options.

would the (Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Wolfdale 3.33GHz) be a wise choice then? and better? Also does that leave me with no option to install the 3.0 quad unless i upgrade the mobo? oh nd thx for the reply

Get the E8400 instead of the E8600. E8400 is the same processor as the E8600. You can do a mild overclock on the E8400. Dell XPS 630 line allows for overclocks.

In regards to the quad, 45nm Yorkfields, Nvidia 6x0i chipset does not officially support them. Some folks have gotten them to work, but it's not a guaranteed. That then leads to your next option, a motherboard upgrade to support the Yorkfields. But if you're getting a new motherboard you might as well go i7(X58) or P55.

An E8400 @ 3.6ghz with 4gigs of memory and a GTX280 will run games fine for the next 2 years.

I would not waste your cash on upgrading that much of your system. Just get new if you want to do that much. You could probably reuse parts of it though to save you some money like your optical and hdd's. For an upgrade, get another 1gb stick of ram and a GTX 275 and clock your current quad to 3.0.

To be honest im not going extreme with those heavy resolutions i just wanna keep this machine for at least another 2 years the most and be able to play all games at least moderately high which means excluding AA etc

but umm for now it looks like ill be ordering the gtx 280 along with 1 gig corsair memory. =]

nonetheless i just might instead clock my quad to 3.0 to save money

I agree, if your not going to just buy a new rig, grabbing a decent gpu and ocing your cpu to 3.0 should give you a really substantial boost, for a fraction of the price, and it will definitely last you another 2 years.

I would not get the GTX 280. They tend to have high failure rate from what I have seen. Go with the GTX 275. Much better card.

thx a lot guys for the advice it helped, much appreciated. lol but within a year or 2 ill be coming back for more advice on a new build =]] btw any1 have a thread that shows you how to oc a quad?