Upgrading from Pentium D 820

Hi, I'm looking at using christmas money to upgrade my CPU/mobo and possibly RAM in my HP Media Center m7160n. Currently, I have:

3GB DDR2 RAM (2x1GB 2x512MB)
Intel Pentium D 820 @2.80GHz
Asus P5LP-LE Limestone Motherboard
Conexant Falcon II Analog TV Tuner (PCI)
RILink WLAN G (PCI)
MSi Nvidia GT440 (PCIe, dual slot)
250GB 7200rpm SATA HDD
2 DVD drives
300W PSU

I'm running windows 7 home premium 32-bit, but I'll switch to 64 if I get more RAM.

Some common tasks I need to use the computer for:
Internet Browsing
Office Applications
Animating in Flash Pro CS5.5
Animating while streaming with Livestream Procaster
Transcoding Videos with Badaboom
Recording TV in Media Center
Listening to music
Modeling in Autodesk Inventor 2011

I've also recently taken up some PC gaming, my current library and performance (all at 1280x1024):

Burnout Paradise
On low settings, around 40FPS with major slowdown during crashes.

Halo
Smooth in 3D with high settings

Sonic Heroes
Smooth with high settings

Sonic adventure DX
smooth in 3D with high settings and added motion blur filters

Oblivion
Smooth with high settings

Skyrim
around 40FPS with low settings

Trackmania nations forever
smooth in 3d with high settings

Team fortress 2
smooth in 3d with high settings

portal
smooth in 3d with high settings

minecraft
smooth with fancy graphics, smooth shading, and normal draw distance

terraria
smooth

magicka
smooth



Right now, I'm looking at this athlon II X3, and I need:
to know if this will be a significant improvement over my current CPU
a motherboard to go with it that will
-fit my tuner, wifi, and gfx cards
-have core (and possibly L3) unlocking for that fourth core
-preferably have surround sound in 3.5mm jacks
-preferably have FireWire
budget DDR3 RAM if necessary

and I need to avoid going over the PSU's limits to stay on a tight budget. right now I'm looking at around 175 USD, but I might be able to go higher. I need this desktop to last me 2 1/2 more years until I go to college.

oh, and I do all of my buying on amazon, though I may be able to make an exception for part of the order.

Hp lists the board as supporting the Core2 Duo E6XXX and e4XXX chips. The the rest of the system will not need to be changed. You may be able to get a cpu for cheap. Rebuilding for 175 is not that easy. an e6600 while an upgrade, is not like a new system, but you need a board,memory and a cpu at the very least.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc [...] 864946#N97

Benchmarks for the E6600 also has the Pentium D 840(one step above your current cpu) so you get an idea
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 82-14.html

Core unlocking might work, but it might not and it may be unstable.

Are you stuck on AMD or is Intel an option?

Your game performance is going to rely solely on your graphics card, your's is pretty outdated, but then again so is your monitor. A new mobo, ram, cpu is not going to make your games play faster when your still using the same video card.

Today's standard monitor resolution is 1920x1080. My older 22" is 1680x1050. Yours is 1280x1024. I'd recommend a monitor upgrade first, then work on the computer. There's no bigger satisfaction than a nice monitor. I'd recommend at least a 22" (1920x1080)

A X3 isn't going to render very well. As you can see from this chart, even a dual core i3 will beat the X3 in just about everything, including rendering. Of course it costs more, but your going to get what you pay for no matter what.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/202?vs=289

I wouldn't recommend a AMD board with Nvidia chipset for one, and secondly I wouldn't recommend a AM3 motherboard because you will never be able to upgrade it, you should be looking at AM3+ motherboards and a minimum of a X4 955.

It depends if you have access to microcenter or not, they have crazy combos. So it depends where you live...

Whatever you do, don't get an AMD CPU with an Nvidia chipset. That's asking for stability problems.

Core i3 is a solid choice. Or perhaps consider the Phenom 960T going for about $130 that can be unlocked to a Phenom II X6 (will be much faster than Core i3 if it works).

Then grab an AMD motherboard that supposrts your old DDR2 and you're set! I would think it easier than including DDR3 into your limited budget going with the Core i3.

Sandy Bridge really is only at its best with the i5-2500K and i7-2600K. All beyond your budget.

matx = microATX

the other spec is ITX or mini-ITX

I'll probably leave the tuner out for now; I don't use it much. Then I can ask for a digital PCIe one on my birthday or something. Can you confirm that this mobo supports core unlocking and OC?

actually, would it be cheaper to get a USB wifi dongle and keep the tuner in? it's a good tuner with a MPEG-2 chip and deinterlacing built in. It also connects to some composite jacks on the front of the desktop.

yeah, I'll just get this when $10 Amazon Gift Cards comes in for signing up for Netflix.

The much faster i3-2120 is actually cheaper than the 2100 right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] pk=i3-2120 $120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128527 $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] SID=232390 x 2 $20 after rebate http://images10.newegg.com/uploadf [...] yh62us.pdf

$190

Not that you would really want Bulldozer...

I do a lot more flash animating than gaming, which is why I was looking for a CPU upgrade rather than another new GPU.

i3-2100 vs X3 450

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/189?vs=289

Keep in mind the 2120 is 200mhz faster than the 2100.