$300 for Upgrades

[dbman19]

Hey Everyone
Quick Questions

I've got $300 to spend on my computer and was wondering where it would be best spent...

Right now I have:
Asus M3A76C
Athlon X2 5600 @3.2
4gb Patriot 6400
8800GS 384mb
Maxtor 250gb SATA
Antec 550watt

Now just up front, i'm not interestind in swapping motherboards for an Intel setup or anything like that

Initially I was thinking
Western Digital 500GB Green and an external enclosure for the 250gb
And a @ $100-$150 video card, maybe 4850??

But I was also wondering if I upgraded the CPU as well if I would get a good boost too......
Again around $100.....

This rig is mainly used for some gaming and just general work
Monitor is a 1368x768 LCD or a 1600x1200 CRT
Need for Speed, TF2, are the big games

Thanks

 

[dbman19]

Any ideas guys?

 

[dodonga]

With those 300 bucks i'd get a radeon 4870 and a new harddisk, a nice 640gb wd caviar black. Another good choice would be a change of processor, a nice phenom ii can go in the am2+ socket, and you could probably still fit in a 4870 if you spend a bit more.

 

[obsidian86]

get the samsung f3 with a 550 and cooler with doesn seem that your board supports am3 cpu's http://event.asus.com/mb/AM3_CPU_Support/ but you can try it

 

[dbman19]

Just another thing, am I going to start running into a bottleneck with my cpu??

 

[dodonga]

Not if you're just playing TF2 or Need for speed, but if you start playing some newer game soon and you get a nice video card and no processor upgrade you will probably run into a bottleneck.

 

[obsidian86]

the newer amd chips has 25% over am2 chips at the same speed

 

[dbman19]

Alright, newegg has these CPUs in my price range
Phenom 9350 2.0x4 Agena
Phenom 9650 2.3x4
Phenom 2 705e 2.5x3
Phenom 2 720e 2.8x3
Phenom 9750 2.4x4
Athlon 2 250 3.0x2 Regor

Would I see a benefit by swapping for one of these??
If so which one would be the best for gaming??

 

[dbman19]

And is the $25 between the Athlon and the Phenoms worth the performance gain?

 

[obsidian86]

the 550 would be best bet for gaming

 

[Outlander_04]

Phenom ll X3 720 be $119

ati 4870 ~ $140

 

[dodonga]

^+1