System upgrade! GAMING.

OKAY. What I have now...
AMD Athlon 4000 (socket 939, so not X2)
DFI Lanparty NF4
2gb Kingston HyperX PC3200 (4x512) dual channel
EVGA Geforce 9800GTX+ 512mb PCI-E (I have a feeling my processor is bottlenecking this card...) (3months old)
Corsair VX550W PSU (3 months old)
500gb Western Digital Caviar Black (4 months)

And yea, that's the main system.
I lag on Warcraft at medium settings in Dalaran. Team Fortress 2 can't recover if I alt-tab. Aion runs at 25fps on medium-high settings and has some really choppy areas.

I am Canadian, so I buy from http://www.newegg.ca or a store 5 minutes away Http://www.memoryexpress.com
I have $400-$500 to spend on an upgrade that I want to play my MMO RPGs on, LFD2 on and much more. I do not want my 9800GTX+ to be bottle capped anymore.

What would you recommend for Processor, motherboard, ram?

how about this?
mb: GA-P55M-UD2 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6813128405 at 119.99
cpu: Intel Core i5-750 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6819115215 at 220.99
memory: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6820231193 at 91.49
total 432.47

I like your ideas so far!
But is there any ram from www.memoryexpress.com you would recommend?

Ram is the only product I prefer to buy locally, as it seems to be the most 'hot or miss' hwardware.
Sorry! I should have said that earlier.

The i5 750 looks really good! I was originally considering a Phenom 2 550BE or an E8400, but the i5 750 looks like it is much much more powerful for a good price, right?

I RETURN...
I've read a number of articles on the best motherboard parings.
There are a lot of choices!
I want to be able to give overclocking a try when I have some more money and can afford a GREAT case (using my old one) and when the socket has more HSFs available to it (maybe when the mux-120 is out in my area).

SO! With that being said, I'm still in termoil over a few boards.
I like ASUS, GIGABYTE, EVGA
I dislike MSI because it does not have a solid bios backup function, where as Gigabyte has a fantastic one.

EVGA P55 SLI 132-LF-E655-KR LGA1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - $219 Most expensive, from what I gather an incredible board in every way.. but probably not worth the price? can anyonce convince me otherwise? Why did I even put this here? I guess I just like EVGA.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6813188055



ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - $169
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6813131404

Reviewed by Toms as a strong contender, trusted brand and apparently overclocks well. The downfall is the single PCI-E 16x slot? with the other going at 4.0? I won't be doing SLI for months so maybe this won't matter to me?


GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD4 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - $164
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6813128404

Downfall is micro ATX when I do not need micro, and apparently is rather cramped. It performs well with overclocking like the ASUS and MSI boards.
It also has a PCI-E 16x slot, AND an 8x slot (not 4!) which is a step above the ASUS for future SLI.
( according to http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/m [...] 4-review/1 )


GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD3R LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - $149.99
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6813128401

Standard sized, yay! This board like the ASUS has a PCI-E 16x slot, and a 4x rated slot. This and the ASUS seem VERY similar in overclocking and everything. If they were identical in 'potential' I suppose I'd choose this cheaper one.



ANYWAYS! those are my thoughts outlined. Your thoughts?
- I want to overclock decently for the value. What do I mean by that? If the difference between the $220motherboard A and the $150motherboard B is marginal with no other bonuses to motherboard A, then B is the way to go!

- I am not going SLI for quite some time, maybe never if my performance feels great. So this is not a 'huge deciding factor

- I know that there is a lot that I do not know.