Upgrade from my GEFORCE GTX 295 - Seeking advice.

Hello,

I own a system with the following, that I purchased in 2009.

EVGA X58 3X SLI CLASSIFIED
EVGA NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 295
INTEL i7-950 3.06GHZ 8M LGA 1366 FACT OCLCKD
CORSAIR 2GBx3 1866 MHZ DDR3 DOMINATOR
COOLERMASTER 1000W REAL POWER PRO

I have a budget of about $500-800 for upgrading my system's grraphics or cpu.

I can do it now, or I can wait for until January if the community thinks its a bad time.

I see that buying more GTX 295's for SLI setting is not a feasible option anymore.

I would like to ask you guys expert opinion on how I should be spend my money for the upgrade. I am only willing to make this upgrade if this setup is outdated for todays games in your opinion and if I will get a significant boost in performance.

Which card do you recommend that would work with my EVGA X58 CLASSIFIED?

Do you recommend a single card or an SLI setup? (I ll be playing Skyrim, and they just announced SLI support)

I would be grateful for your advise.

For your budget , I would suggest 2 X GTX 570 in SLI or 2 x 6950 xfire, your CPU can just be overclocked to give you better performance.

Yes definately compatible , you will see a huge performance increase with it compared to the 295

oc the cpu
poss double the ram
Sli gtx 570

ftw!
ps. i wish i had your starting position & budget lol

edit. wait for nvidia 6 series?

rumours of nvidia 6 family release aside (they range from q1 2012 to q3/4 2012), would you consider a swap to sandy bridge / ivy bridge platform (ivy bridge retail expected march 2012)?

on my limited experience and knowledge they seem to represent the best gaming performance/dollar and with i5-2500K there seems no reason to run under 4.2GHz from what I see (if my sig displays you can see I run @ 4.4GHz without problem on a very cheap {imho} Cooler Master Hyper 212+ air cooling solution), Im certain this can go higher but I leapt from Q6600 at stock so need to push further in my case, noctua cooling or other can probably cope admirably with 5 GHz

chaz

edit: bah no sig displaying

2nd edit: that 950 should be able to hit 4.0GHz in right conditions, no?

no worries, 3.7 is fine and dandy and its a handsome cpu by all accounts

how about 2 x MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 560 Ti = 540 USD ?

some more food for thought here: sell the mobo, 950 and ram and swap it all out for;

2 x MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2GB
G.SKILL Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
ASRock Z68 EXTREME4 GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge

$984.95 (less the the revenue your sale brings in)

I need to get off newegg before I end up building a new system I definately can not afford ;-)

chaz