Need Advice Should I Upgrade?

[tastemaker]

I am currently in Afghanistan with the Army and I return home in a few months and was wanting to know if it is a smart choice to upgrade now or wait. I want to play BF3 and SWTOR on full settings with all the eye candy. I only play on one display a ASUS VH242H 23.6" at 1920x1080. I have been reading around for the past day or so about video cards but I am undecided I want the best bang for my buck, but I don't want overkill, but also something that is going to last a year or so. So if it is not a waste for me to upgrade please let me know. I don't not have a preference of brand and my GPU budget is around $500.

Current Spec:
Case:COOLER MASTER HAF 922
MoBo: ASUS M4A79XTD EVO
GPU: SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 5870 1GB
PSU: CORSAIR 750W
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE
RAM: G.SKILL 6GB DDR3 1600
CPU Cooler: CORSAIR H50
HD: WD VelociRaptor 150GB

The Upgrade:
Case: COOLER MASTER HAF X
MoBo: ASUS SABERTOOTH P67
GPU: Undecided and need help!
PSU: CORSAIR AX850
CPU: i5-2500K
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600
CPU Cooler: CORSAIR H80
HD: 2x Corsair GT 120GB SSD (Raid 0)

 

[a4mula]

Your current system isn't exactly going to hold you back much. While it's not going to do BF3 on Ultra with AA @ 60 fps, you'd still be able to play at 1920x1080 on High or with AA disabled.

So, I'd hold off on upgrading until Ivory Bridge hits (at a minimum) and you can take a look at the new offerings from AMD and nVidia on the gpu front.

With that being said if you are just set on upgrading now, which I'd understand,. at normal resolutions nVidia single card setups are king right now. The 570 is hitting 49fps while the 580 does 55fps (1920x1080, AA, Ultra)

 

[tastemaker]

Best answer selected by Tastemaker.

 

[kajabla]

Ivy Bridge*?
Ivy is a CPU platform and unrelated to GPUs. There will be new GPU offerings fairly soon, though.
New CPU developments will not be relevant to you, I think. The 2500K's probably good enough for the next year of graphics hardware.
You could just add another 5870.