So I've been helping my brother with upgrades for quite some time. A while ago, I would give him my hand-me-down parts, but then it became too expensive to give them away for free so I've helped him pick out parts with advice like "No, pairing a GTX 580 with an Athlon X2 would be a terrible idea..." Anyways, he's graduating high school soon and wants to revamp his computer before going back to college, and I wanted to get some TH input on my proposed upgrades, so here are his current build, and my proposed build:
Current Build
AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition
Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H
4x2GB DDR3-1600
GTS 250
500GB 7200RPM HDD
OCZ GameXstream 850W
Proposed Upgrades
EVGA GTX 560 Superclock ($170)
128GB Crucial M4 ($125)
Cost: $295
Right now, he's gaming on a 20-inch 1680x1050 display, which he'll also be upgrading...likely to about 24-27 inches and 1920x1080. Also, I know the processor is old, but seeing as how he can't quite afford to pair it with a real high-end card, I didn't he'd be seeing a whole lot of improvement with a faster processor. If I get a lot of people disagreeing with that, then I'll take a look at processor/mobo combos, I'm just hesitant because of how expensive that would be and I'm not sure if the improvement would be all that noticeable. Anyways, thanks for your help!
Current Build
AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition
Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H
4x2GB DDR3-1600
GTS 250
500GB 7200RPM HDD
OCZ GameXstream 850W
Proposed Upgrades
EVGA GTX 560 Superclock ($170)
128GB Crucial M4 ($125)
Cost: $295
Right now, he's gaming on a 20-inch 1680x1050 display, which he'll also be upgrading...likely to about 24-27 inches and 1920x1080. Also, I know the processor is old, but seeing as how he can't quite afford to pair it with a real high-end card, I didn't he'd be seeing a whole lot of improvement with a faster processor. If I get a lot of people disagreeing with that, then I'll take a look at processor/mobo combos, I'm just hesitant because of how expensive that would be and I'm not sure if the improvement would be all that noticeable. Anyways, thanks for your help!