where to upgrade

[Icalbert101]

Where would my money be best spent?
What test can I perform to figure this out?
Ill give a run down but I would prefer an answer that would help me find the answer myself.
Asus m5a97 v 1.02
Amd Phenom (TM) x4 955 3200mhz
radeon 6800 series ID 6739
Corsair dominator 2x 2gb
Seagate 1tb (SSD already in the mail)

Obviously this isn't a high dollar system and I need to be thrifty with upgrades

Links to tests I can run or straight forward answers greatly appreciated

 

[zolton33]

The gpu and cpu can be upgraded to show some increased performance. such as a 8350 cpu and a Radeon HD 7850 If you have a 64 bit os then getting ram up to 8 gigs would also help with performance as well as upgrading the os to a 64 bit to use to upgrade to 8 gigs. All of these will see a performance increase.

 

[Icalbert101]

What about an nvida card. Or how big of a pain is it to setup crossfire. I heard nvida cards are less dependent on the CPU. Would I be better with a single nvida card. I can swing 8 gb of ram. What about just some cooling upgrades and over clocking. Is there a program other than the BIOS to "turn on and off" overclocking easily

 

[zolton33]

Some swear by sli/crossfire and many others do not bother. It would come down to what you can afford.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html

That is a good place to start on looking at gpu's they list the best gpu's per price ranges and a good place to start. If you plan to over clock extra cooling is highly recommended. But keep in mind it does stress the cpu so can shorten its life span.