Q6700 Upgrade/Downgrade vs. 9800 GT Upgrade

[Airmanator]

Hello! Currently, I'm running a lowly Q6700 at stock speed and cooling. Some what good at games, and works nicely for juggling applications, but that's just the four cores. From what I understand, I could downgrade to a Q6600 and overclock it, or buy an E8400/E8500 and leave it where it is.

Now, I could do that or upgrade my video card, which happens to be a 9800 GT, with the motherboard Intel G33. Yeah, I was surprised when I heard of it too - and it only came with one PCI-E slot - x16.

I'm in a bit of a bind right now, so I can only upgrade one side, the video card or CPU. I did want to use Nvidia's SLi feature, but that of course requires two PCI-E 2 slots, which I don't have. What I could do is pick up a motherboard that support PCI-E 2.0 for a slight boost of performance.

As you could of guessed, I'm not an enthusiast, but I would like to achieve as much in a price range of 250, but I can bump that up to 300. Should I change the CPU, Video card, or video card + motherboard for PCI-E 2.0 support?

Thanks in advance for informative replies.

Shorthand information:
Intel G33
Q6700
9800 GT
6 gigs of RAM
Air cooling (I'm cheap tot he point of just setting up a household fan to slow directly on the exposed components of the computer.)

 

[ehanger]

What would be the point of "downgrading" to a Q6600 when you have the Q6700? The only reason I can see is if you wanted to get a G0 stepping model which might give you *slightly* higher overclocks.

Also the 9800GT is still a great video card and can run 95% of the games out right now at high settings.

The best upgrade I think for $250-300 would be to get the arctic freezer 7 pro cooler for $30, overclock the Q6700 to 3.0 - 3.2GHz and buy a GTX 275/ Radeon 4890 video card for $220-250.

Can you also give us the specs of your powersupply?

 

[Airmanator]

Cooler Master 500 watt

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171031

 

[shubham1401]

That PSU won't power a GTX 275.
And there is no point of downgrading the cpu.

 

[ehanger]

Yeah shubham is right that 500w coolermaster isn't going to be enough to power a GTX 275. Since the 9800GT is still a viable card for todays games maybe just upgrade the CPU cooler and get a 750-850W powersupply and wait another 6 months for the DX11 cards to come out then get a Radeon 5870/GTX 300 card?

 

[Airmanator]

Well, I suppose I could dwap out the motherboard to take advantage of the PCI-E 2.0 technology. From what I'm reading, the Intel G33 is terrible for overclocking CPUs. Does anyone know of a motherboard ont he market that can replace the G33 so I can OC the 6700? Quality and the same size would be nice.

 

[Airmanator]

EDIT: Sorry, double post.

 

[h0devil]

don't buy dead end mobo or video card
save your money and Upgrade later for i7 or i5 and 5870/GTX 300