Upgrading For BF3/Skyrim

[geogaddi]

Hello all,

Was wondering if someone could give me some advice - it's been a while since I built this machine I've using, and I wanted to be able to run BF3/Skyrim at native max resolutions of 1440x900 - during the beta of BF3 my frame rate was suffering quite horribly from doing so. My current build is as follows :

CPU : Dual Core E8800 Wolfdale @ 3.00ghz/2.67ghz
Mobo : Gigabyte EP45-UD3P
RAM : 4gb @ 1066mhz DDR2
Video : Powercolor 4850HD

I can see I'm limited to LGA775 so I'm guessing the best I can do is throw on a quad core... not sure if it's worth it. Alternatively, would it be viable to upgrade both the video card and ram, but not the CPU, or would it just not be worth my time and money? I'm willing to spend up to 300$ but seeing how 800$ is how much I paid for this system, I'd have to look at the marginal benefit of doing so.

Thanks

 

[AbdullahG]

I would save up. Games are getting demanding, and an old dual core and GPU won't keep up very well with them. If you really cannot wait, a GPU upgrade will really help, maybe a GTX 460/560 or HD 6850/70 . I would use the extra $100 and save up.

 

[Emelth]

IMO I say not worth my time or money. You would need to upgrade cpu, gpu, and mobo.