Is this worth an upgrade?

From 2.6GHz to 3.0GHz, with a decent cooler you can overclock your 9950 to 3.0 GHz.
Used 940 same clock http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/80?vs=21

i have it at 2.9 right now so theres something else holding it back

This would be a better upgrade if your board supports it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
What GPU are you using?

well i emailed biostar and asked if the phenom ii 965 would work and they said no. only cuz its soemthing to do with the 965 being on a dual power plane design and the 9950 is only single. they told me to look at supported cpu on their site and they didnt even have the 9950 which is what im using now. so idk if i should believe them

o forgot the gpu. its the hd 6850

heres what biostar said

TA790GX 128M motherboard is not compatible with Phenom II X4 965 CPU. The CPU requires a dual power plane motherboard, but this motherboard is built on single power plane design.

I know what they are talking about, many boards have an issue where the CPU gets stuck on 800MHz if it is dual PP. What GPU (graphics card) are you using?

You should be playing it decently then.

o i am playing it pretty decently but i am a perfectionist lol.i want the best i can get. skyrim actually runs worse than bf3. i get stuttering alot. but average fps for bf3 is 40 and i can run all high settings except AA,AO,motion blur on. so pretty decent i guess. i get fps drops in skyrim when turning to around 3 fps then it jumps back to 40-50

Apart from a full CPU/mobo upgrade then you will not get a lot out of CPU on your current board.

so u think just save some money and buy a whole new system is my best option?

Depending on what other hardware you have, LGA 1155 board and CPU along with ram (presuming you are on DDR2), reusing the other hardware.

I3 is not and competes with the faster X4 Phenoms in gaming. Then again a fast X4 and a AM3+ board is not a bad combination.

i feel like a general computer with an i3. its only dual core. i hate that. i want something better for my money. i have been looking at the fx series but hear alooot of bad about them. what is the deal? they cant tbe that bad right? i mean i dont care about benchmark scores. only gaming performance

FX does less per clock than a Phenom II and in general the disappointment with them is gaming. Piledriver is supposed to come out later this year (Q3) and be an improvement.

but would it be good for what i need it for?

The FX4170 has a very high clockspeed and is the best at gaming of those.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-o...

ok i wont need anything more than 4 cores. thanks for all ur help