Advice

[nankura]

Hey guys

first up, this forum confused me so i wasnt sure were to post this, so admins move it if you have to and i apologise if its in the wrong section

second. this is all based on the australian dollar. so please no american sites or links. now the issue

ok basically i have a 300$ max budget and i dont want to break the bank, ive checked out MSY and PC Case gear, and going the intel path will break the bank for i5's/etc

Ive already got a psu, gfx, hdd mix, i just need the motherboard/CPU and RAM, im not after a monster pc, just enough to get by with todays games

i was looking at a mix of a 955 Phenom 2 Black, 4GB DDR3 Patriot 1800Mhz RAM, and a motherboard to suit it from ASRock, it would cost me max 260$ from PC Case Gear - australian store

But im not sure if i have to go that way

I was wondering if its possable to just grab a motherboard and some DDR3 ram with an LGA775 Motherboard that supports ddr3 and ddr2 ram slots. with my Q6600 CPU

would that be a cheaper option and do well with gaming

Currently my setup is

Intel Q6600 CPU
DDR2 800Mhz Kingston value ram ( as u can see, my ram is disguisting )
5670 ATi 1GB GFX
500GB WD Blue HD
P45 Neo-F Mainboard
550W PSU

I could probably use a decent cooling case to like a V3 Black Thermaltake

Atm with this setup, i run most games fine, even black ops, but theres always that small lag spike, or stuttering every now and then, thats what i want to get rid of

 

[batuchka]

Err considering games over a spread aren't even quadcore optimised


The Game Rundown: Finding CPU/GPU Bottlenecks, Part 2
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/game-performance-bottleneck,2738-16.html

Conclusion: A Trend Toward 3+ Cores

The average optimal number of CPU cores suggested by the test results is 2.75, showing a clear trend towards at least three CPU cores.The question of whether the CPU or GPU is most important is easily answered. If you don't have a multi-core CPU, then upgrade it. If you have a dual-core CPU at around 3 GHz, then invest your money into a graphics card, as most games are GPU-limited. This is not something that will change with new DirectX 11 games.

Hit an after market cooler as the stock speeds of a Q6600 is a tad low and clock it, state what PSU model u on and something like a gtx 460/hd 6850 would see you net huge gains in your games hehe