What to buy to get out of a problem situation

[trif]

Let me set the scene: i generally have 2 PCs on the go, a new gaming rig, and the old gaming rig, however the old one has died early leaving me with only 1 PC that i dont really wanna fill with crap as i wont be able to play my games, so to the specs:

the dead pc was was an old DDR AGP socket 939 board,
i've been left with a Corsair 400W CX PSU
500gb sata II HDD
(also 2gb of DDR ram and an ok AGP gfx card (Sapphire HD 2600XT 512MB GDDR3)

the gaming PC is as follows:
Corsair 520W HX Series Modular PSU - ATX12V v2.2 APFC
XFX 680I LT edition SLI Socket 775 Nvidia 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
2x Corsair 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4 Lifetime Warranty
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz (1333MHz) Socket 775 6MB L2 Cache OEM Processor
Gigabyte 8800GT 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card

results:

so far its been established its probably not worth trying to save the old system (i think the cpu will die getting it out, and socket939 boards with agp and ddr seem few and far between even on ebay so i'd probs sell the old ram and gfx)

the suggestion has been to get a cheap dual core system:
eg:
£50 cpu
£35 mobo
£70 gfx (or do i spend £110 to get another 8800gt i could SLI in the gaming PC to make it still useful when i by a Core i7 rig in a year) [or get a £200 gfx card for the gaming system to extend its life and use the old 8800gt in this system?]
(i have 2gb of ddr2-800 basically not being used by XP pro 32 bit in the gaming system i could use along with the 400w psu and 500gb hdd to make a system)

or do i get a Core i7 system for about 700-800 now? (would that cost about £500-600 in 7 months when i would normally buy a new system) would it still be good 3ish years from now?



basically how future proof is my current gaming system?[would a new GFX card / SLI extend its life much?]

if its still good i guess i get the cheap system with either a cheap [or swap out GFX card]

if its not much good would a core I7 system be a sensbile purchase now? or wait for i9 release and get that or a cheap i7 system further down the line?

(my gaming aims are currently modern warefare 2 and not much else tbh, if that helps guide ur suggestions)

edit: if i do get a cheap system now and an i7 mid next year my dad would love the cheap dual core system ^^

 

[buwish]

I9's will probably be pretty hefty in price. I'm not sure how expensive exactly, but I would assume that they will out price the current i7 extreme editions. I think your best bet is to spend some cash and just go with an i7 system. You will be future proofing yourself for a few years at least and won't have to play the mix and match game with your old systems.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

I'm more of an AMD system guy. But IIRC that E8400 was on the CPU list for about $150 as a good thing to get.

As such adding in the fact that there will be no way to predict what will happen in a year's time, I'd go with the cheap dual core. I'd say (of course) to go with a Athlon II x2 or x3. Then either DDR2 or DDR3 and a mobo to match, (770 amd/ati chipset or higher, def not the nvidia ones) and a 5xxx series GPU for your current computer. Then use the 8800gt for the dual core. You should see a difference with the 5770 or higher on your gaming system and the 8800GT wont likely be bottlenecked by the Athlon II.

You'll end up with 2 good systems for right now, and see what happens later.