Upgrading an old rig

[glassjoe1991]

Hi guys, I'm looking for an upgrade to a system I built a couple of years ago, and I'm in need of your help.

AMD PHENOM II X4 970 (3.50GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (4 x 2GB KIT)
1GB ATI RADEON™ HD5770
500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
600W PSU

Now, my main reason for the upgrade is that frankly I haven't got the performance I expected. I've seen videos and heard from friends abot how their 5770 maxed out Crysis etc and how recent games like BF3 and Skyrim can be run on Ultra with a system like this. I'm starting to realise that maybe they were talking complete crap.

My main priority is the GPU. The CPU runs pretty fast (although an upgrade is possible) and 8GB is more than enough RAM for gaming purposes, but the graphics card is failing me, and lately actually seems to have gotten worse. Any recommendations for a new card? I intend to play Rome 2, Crysis 3 etc on full when they're released with absolute minimum lag. My budget is roughly £500 for a graphics card and maybe a new CPU.

Thanks for your help.

 

[redeemer]

Your CPU isnt bad at all, with all the price cuts going on you can pick up a 7870 for $240 I think. The 7870 is massively more powerful than you current 5770!

 

[crowz9]

You can max out some present day games with the 5770. I have one myself. It's hard to believe it came out in 2009 and it's so cheap, powerful with low TDP.
Answering to your question.
Get the 7870
or
Crossfire the 5770. If you do that, you get the performance of a 5850. Therefore you will get much better performance than with a single 5770.

BTW: a friend of mine has a 5750 paired with 4gb ram and a i5 2300. He runs Skyrim 1080p on medium/settings smoothly. Nice huh?