[Solved] Time to Upgrade

I built a system about two years ago and I'm seeing signs of trouble.

In MMO’s there’s zones, but they’re pretty subtle now, no more loading screen, just maybe a hiccup. My trouble seems to be crossing into new zones in Darkfall. If I’m moving with a friend at every zone line they’ll be 10 yards/meters ahead.

The first part of my troubles would be that I’m not sure what that signifies. It might be that the loading shows that it’s a slow hard drive (mines 7200 rpm with a cache), or it might be a sign of a slow processor or old video card. (my processor is a core2 duo, 1.86 I think, my video card that I know is bad is a geforce 7950) I have 4 gb RAM that I think is good to go.

The socket on my mobo is 775 socket and I have to stay there, I can’t afford to change that for now.

So now the second part of my request for help is on the Video cards. I know it’s probably time to upgrade that component. I’d like to get a 9800 gtx, and I think I can, but first I wanted an opinion from the experts to see what you all recommend. I’ve never gotten an ATI, my mobo is SLI, so I’m not sure how that works with a crossfire. I don’t plan on buying two video cards right now, so I’m not too worried about that, just wondering if the ATi will even work.

I think after that I’m going to upgrade the processor and I’m thinking a core2 duo 3.?? mhz , but I’m not sure if the quad cores might be something to look into. For the processor I don’t care about the future, just this game.
I plan on doing a new one from scratch in a year or two.

I appreciate any advice on the whole thing.

Thank you so much. I had it in my head that the 250 was longer physically, and took more power. Both are backward and the 250 gts comes out as well as the 9800gtx in both. (a tiny bit better)

I also thought the 250 was much more expensive, but that's about equal as well.

I think I'll take your advice right down the line and get the gts250 and the e7400 as well. I already have 4 gigs of 800 RAM that I'm hoping I can keep.

I wanted to thank you for the help. The graphics card totally solved my problem. Now I'm running 100+ FPS, and I'm out in front when travelling.

I don't think I can even see the difference in anything over 50 fps. 60 to 100 looks the same to me. I even turned on some of the gadgets like shadows and extended my view to further out and no hit on performance at all.