Updating my homebuilt

[fatslandshark]

Just looking for tips on my situation. I trying to be frugal with adding some new hardware as its been a few years now.

I have a e6750 core 2 duo oced to 3.0 ghz (used to be 3.7 but that just up and stopped)
A MSI mobo with sli just at 8x
A radeon 4850 512m
2 gb of ddr2 memory (2 x 1gb)
23 inch 1080p monitor.

Now I want to run my games on high at 1080p and I used to be fine at 1680 by 1050 with my old monitor. Now with the new I had to drop down to 720p resolutions. Should I find a board to do cross fire and add a 2nd vid card and keep the core 2 duo? Should I get a phenom ii x4 or x3 and oc them? Stick with ddr 2 if I can? Just looking for bang for the buck and would like to stick around 120ish for a processor.

Let me know of any ideas. Thanks!

 

[ulysses35]

Depends on what games you are looking to play. Xfire / SLi are not really worth the investment, you would be better off buying a single fast Video cards rather than additing s second mid range one.

Do you know what motherboard you have ? if not download CPUz and find the make of the motherboard and model number. Then check on MSI's website for the cpu's it can support.

Bear in mind that the LGA775 socket has been replace by LGA1156 & LGA1366 you upgrade choice might be limited - but even so there is high chance that you can change your CPU for a Quad core.

 

[coldsleep]

If you could provide a budget range, it would be easier to provide advice.

"Frugal" might mean $100 to some, and $500 to others.

 

[fatslandshark]

The 2nd card idea comes primarly from this site's best for the price video card. The 2 4850's have been on the monthly reports now for some time. I am running XP and someday when beyond dx 9 actually "has a break thru" game I will jump to Win 7. Well Frugal means what make sense for me for the games I play. I had to drop Fallout 3 and Dawn of War 2 out of 1080 p down to 720p and would like to be able to handle those games at full 1080. I do primarly play FPShooters though.

I know that quad core is not an option with my board though and can't seem to find anything of my processor vs modern one's online. I did see in the cpu hierchy on this site that mine was still in the top three. Im looking budget line for everything (nothing extreme high end). 150ish for each part, board, cpu, mem, vid card, hopefully less though.

Bottem line I guess is maybe I just need a video card if my processor isn't a bottleneck.

 

[fatslandshark]

My board is the MSI P5N SLI Platinum BTW.

 

[coldsleep]

If you have to buy a new motherboard in order to Crossfire, that's not worth it...at that point, you'd be better off building an entirely new system. I would get one single good graphics card for now, and plan on moving it to a new build when this one starts slowing down. I'd look at getting an ATI 5850 for around $310-325.