Difficulty in upgrading

[triggerstep]

Hi,I currently have 2 sapphire 3870 toxic's in crossfire.I am having difficulty in figuring out what card/s to upgrade to.My current system is as follows
board-ECS Black Series A790GXM
CPU-AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma
memory-G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066(I have 2 sets)
video-SAPPHIRE TOXIC HD 3870 512MB GDDR4 PCI-E x2(crossfire)
drives-c:WDC WD7501AALS-00E3A0, others 3-ST31000528AS, 1-ST31000333AS
blu-ray-LG-HL-DT-ST BD-RE GBW-H20L
DVD multi-Samson - SH-S223F
DVD ROM-ASUS DVD-E818A3T
power supply-cooler master-RS-750-ACAA-A1(I think it's this one)it's an older one.

I have a few back up pieces.cpu-AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma ,l board- ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe(didn't have the pci-e slots I needed).

OK to my problem.I have looked and looked at many different possibility's as far as new card/s and am really stuck.I have about $150 to spend on new/er cards to me .They can be used or not doesn't matter.I have been through the card reviews here so what I need is HD capability good frame rates for shooters(bfbc2)and capability for newer games when they come out.I play from almost ever genre of games.Detail in games are important to me.So any good idea's or advice would be great.Also I am looking at upgrading me cpu to a phenom II x4 940 or better as well in the future.

 

[rolli59]

I would start with the CPU upgrade (will give a big boost). Then aim at spending about $300 on either 1 better card or 2xHD5770 for crossfire, a single $150 card is comparable in performance to what you have now.

 

[triggerstep]

OK so a CPU upgrade at this point would be better.Hm mm.My only question about the 5770's is the 128bit memory interface vs a 256 bit one.Much difference.(I know a coupe of analogies to help me figure out how it works.)

 

[rolli59]

The HD5770 (128bit) performs a little bit better than HD4870 (256bit) regardless of memory interface size. Technology moves forward!

 

[triggerstep]

Thanks,This is kinda like what Erik said in Erik the viking about expeditions.They have to loot and pillage just to be able to pay for the next expedition.So no added extra core value without the upgraded graphics cards.This is too much.Lol.

 

[rolli59]

1) the CPU upgrade it would not be better, I suggest you read Tom's building a balance gaming rig articles. They test various CPU against GPU including dual core Phenom and Pentium chips. In every test you need graphic performance of a GTX260/ATI 4870 to start seeing the added value of extra cores even in games like FAR CRY 2 that are optimized for multi cores.

AMD
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/balanced-gaming-pc,2477-9.html
Intel
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-balanced-platform,2469-9.html

2) the only proper way to evaluated a video card is through benchmarks, statistics mean very little.

He has Crossfired HD3870 that would perform close enough to HD4870 to get some benefit of going to a Phenom II X4

 

[triggerstep]

Ok so that out of the way.Any issues with any of the manufacturer's as far as support or any brand have better track records and such.Thanks for all the info