Is my processor bottle necking my video card?

what games you play?

whats your monitors resolution?

bad company 2 at 1024x768

with medium settings hence the low fps. my old card was the 9600 gt which did fine.

With your CPU at stock, yes there will be a nice fat bottleneck at that resolution. You have 2 choices, either crank up that CPU to at least 3.4Ghz+ or upgrade your screen to at least a 1680x 1050 or greater. At low resolutions the CPU becomes the bottleneck, at high resolutions the GPU becomes the bottleneck.

Yes it's a bottleneck, but no there shouldn't be low framerates. They should be much, much higher than at 1050x1680 even if there is a large bottleneck.

I have to agree. And making the point of contention worse, Bad Company 2 is a fairly CPU intensive game. It relies on the CPU to perform all of it's physics related tasks.

Since my socket is AM2+ it also supports AM3 processors, so to fix the bottlenecking what processor would you recommend? Do i have to get any new cooling fans or liquid cooling for a new faster processor and also, is 650 watts enough? Im not really sure if the power calculators on other sites are reliable. As long as the cpu is not extensive as a 6x core in terms of money and speed.

What processor would be good depends on your budget, since most newer processors won't bottleneck that 5770.

If your budget is tight, try the Athlon II x3 435
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

If you have more cash, bump up to an x4 635
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

If your budget allows, a Phenom II x4 would be the next step up.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
(or add $15 for the black edition)

As for cooling, as long as you are not overclocking, the stock fans that come with any new processors are perfectly fine.

Also 650 watts should be plenty as long as it is a halfway decent brand of psu.

yea +1 to both jerreece & aebome

BC2 is a CPU and GPU hog, at 3Ghz using only 2 cores I get crazy frame-drops, it seems to use all 4 cores AFAIK :

Thanks for the help. Now to get a quad.....

If it'll do AM3 processors, get a Phenom II X4, not a Phenom X4. The "II" indicates second generation, and they are MUCH better CPUs.  

Sure but i may be over worried about over heating. Thats how I think my old video card stopped working from a blown capacitor possibly from heat. Since then my systems been cooler than before with the new 5770.