Need Help Upgrading My 2-year-old computer

[iknowit]

I bought my HP p6210y 2 years ago. I think it's quite old now and need some upgrades. I'm a casual gamer. I just play games for fun, so I don't need extremely high quality graphics. But I do want to play lately games such as BF3 or Skyrim (in somewhere bw medium and high graphics quality). Here are my current specs:

Motherboard: M2N78-LA (Violet)
CPU: AMD Athlon x4 620 Quad Core
Memory: 6GB DRR2 800MHz Dual Channel
Video card: ASUS ENGT 430 (bought a year ago and prefer to upgrade to a manufactured OC GTX 460)
PSU: 300W (prefer to upgrade to a 550W-600W one)
Monitor: 22' HP Monitor. Res. 1600x900 (This will be the max resolution when I play games, so I don't think I will upgrade this).

Looking at my specs right now, I think I definitely have to upgrade my PSU and video card first. So the question is with my preferred video card and PSU, will my CPU be the bottleneck?
And if I have to upgrade my CPU, can my motherboard handle any of the lately AMD's CPUs?

My budget is around $300-400, as low as possible. The maximum is $500.

I appreciate any recommendation and opinions from you guys. Thank you.

 

[GI_JONES]

quotemsg=2441628,1,1033221]I bought my HP p6210y 2 years ago. I think it's quite old now and need some upgrades. I'm a casual gamer. I just play games for fun, so I don't need extremely high quality graphics. But I do want to play lately games such as BF3 or Skyrim (in somewhere bw medium and high graphics quality). Here are my current specs:

Motherboard: M2N78-LA (Violet)
CPU: AMD Athlon x4 620 Quad Core
Memory: 6GB DRR2 800MHz Dual Channel
Video card: ASUS ENGT 430 (bought a year ago and prefer to upgrade to a manufactured OC GTX 460)
PSU: 300W (prefer to upgrade to a 550W-600W one)
Monitor: 22' HP Monitor. Res. 1600x900 (This will be the max resolution when I play games, so I don't think I will upgrade this).

Looking at my specs right now, I think I definitely have to upgrade my PSU and video card first. So the question is with my preferred video card and PSU, will my CPU be the bottleneck?
And if I have to upgrade my CPU, can my motherboard handle any of the lately AMD's CPUs?

My budget is around $300-400, as low as possible. The maximum is $500.

I appreciate any recommendation and opinions from you guys. Thank you.[/quotemsg]
Right now til 11-22 Newegg has this PSU, with a $10.00 off promo code and rebate..ends up at $44.99. Nice power supply for a good price. It would easily run a GTX 460 - GTX570 card. That leaves quite a bit for a nice video card
url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341022][/url][

 

[FinneousPJ]

The video card to have now is a 6950 or GTX 560 Ti or better. You will need a 500-600W PSU to run one; 750+W to run CF/SLI. You are correct this is the best course of action for you at the moment.

 

[DelroyMonjo]

Right now you can get a EVGA 01G-P3-1561-AR GeForce GTX 560 Ti FPB (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 $229.99 w/ $20 rebate. Both the 460 and 560 are double wide cards, they plug into 1 slot but take up 2 cards worth of real estate. That takes you to $279.88 w/ rebates. That's an AM3 MB so you could even upgrade the CPU if desired, but that DDR2 RAM is a slight drawback. Why HP put 6 GB Ram an a 4 slot motherboard is beyond me but if it's using a 32 bit OS you can only use 3.5 GB anyway. $274.88 for the PSU and vid card with rebates. Go for the 560Ti now and see how it goes. It should rip thru 1600X900 resolution like buddah.

 

[iknowit]

So the problem for the PSU is solved. The last thing that's bothering me is whether my CPU (Athlon) bottleneck the Geforce GTX 560Ti.
I'm running windows 7 64 bit, so it recognizes all 6GB RAM. I know my memory is a drawback but here is the memory upgrade info from HP:

Dual channel memory architecture
Four DDR2 SO-DIMM (240-pin) sockets
Supported DIMM types:
PC2-6400 (800 MHz)
PC2-5300 (667 MHz)
Non-ECC memory only, unbuffered
Supports 4GB DDR2 DIMMs
Supports up to 16 GB on 64-bit PCs
Supports up to 4 GB* on 32-bit PCs
32 bit PCs cannot address a full 4.0 GB of memory.

I guess I can't upgrade to a DDR3 RAM, right?

 

[iknowit]

Best answer selected by iknowit.