What's my next "logical" upgrade?

[p3matty]

I think that everything I've got is pretty well suited to everything else in the system, meaning that nothing in particular is slowing down anything when gaming, encoding, multitasking, whatever, but I think this forum would know better than I.

Currently I've got an Intel E5200 OC'ed to 3.33 GHz, 4 GB RAM running at 800 MHz, a ATI 4850 factory overclocked I believe, 2 Seagate 7200.10 or maybe .11 320 GB HDs in a RAID 0 array, all connected to an ASUS P5k-E wi-fi board. I'm in the process of backing everything up and upgrading to Windows 7 and thought this would be as good a time as any to look at potential upgrades. I do about 50% gaming (@ 1680x1050 currently), and 50% multimedia "stuff" with encoding video and such, as well as all your basic stuff.

It seems I have 2 upgrade options the way I see it. First is to go to a quad core at $150+ or so, which I'd hate to do as it's over twice the price that I spent for the E5200 which I've had for less than a year. The second, and more logical long term upgrade would be to go to an i5, but with new memory, new CPU, and new board it's at least a $500 upgrade that I don't want to invest in quite yet.

Really is anything in my current set up holding me back that much with anything that I'm doing?

 

[azconnie]

Nah, your system looks good as is. Only some single digit percentage of apps can use more than 2 cores, and with Nahlem out, by the time you need Quad, you can trade one for a copy of the ET game. Although I will take this opportinity to preach the virtues of Nvidia. GT300 will be out soon, and the Fermi archetecture is totally C+ enabled meaning the GPU will offload the CPU in almost every scenerio, plus the full ECC support. So there, my only reccomendation is a GTX 360 when you feel like springing for one, and a core 2 quad after a year or two.