Upgrading 9600GT possibly carry over for an i5 build around 200$

[JBroad]

Greetings community,

I am running the system below:
Intel Core2Duo E8400 3Ghz (stock clock/cooler)
Gigabyte EP35-DS4
XFX GeForce 9600GT 512 DDR3 Alpha Dog
4x1 GB Geil PC2-6400 DDR2-800 C4 ULTRA DUAL CHANNEL
Corsair VX-550 PSU

Main problem is that since the last updates Guild Wars 2 FPS has dropped to dangerously low levels. Large fights in WvW are close to being unplayable. I had medium-low settings since beta and all was good but now I've turned everything to low and tweaked NVIDIA settings and game-play is still not as smooth.
I ve been through lots of articles here and some other forums and they all seem to agree that even for a CPU intensive game a good GPU will help in some aspects. So I've been thinking to replace my good old Dino 9600GT. After reading the Graphics Card Performance Hierarchy Chart i ve been thinking that an 650Ti (or possibly a Ti Boost) would help my situation now and can be carried over as start up GPU on an i5 rig in a few months.

I would most probably buy it within a month and my price range is 140$-200$ (100€-150€). I have an affinity towards NVIDIA (had drivers issues with older ATi and it kind of put me off)

Gaming, most importantly GW2 as FM13 nor Office really need a GPU and all my movie needs are already covered.
1680x1050 is my resolution and although I'm not an ULTRA settings freak I do like at least medium details. I know that my CPU would most probably bottleneck the GPU but I'm thinking it can be carried over to a new system.

Availability in brands and models is meager here but these 3 examples are within budget. If you have another suggestion i could check if i can get my hands on it.
Gigabyte 650 Ti
Gigabyte 650 Ti Boost
ASUS 650Ti

I am not too comfortable with overclocking although i'm tempted by my CPU. Also not a fan of SLI configurations either but would consider it if it would provide me with value for money.

That's all i think. Looking forward to your suggestions.

 

[monsta]

For that little bit extra consider a GTX 660, it is in a decent price range for its performance and will give your pc a good performance jump from the 9600GT and will also work well with your current psu.
Also getting a decent cpu cooler for your E8400 so you can overclock it and get more from your pc for gaming performance would be a good idea.

 

[JBroad]

For that little bit extra consider a GTX 660, [...]
Also getting a decent cpu cooler for your E8400 so you can overclock it and get more from your pc for gaming performance would be a good idea.

I ve considered the 660 but it's a bit over my budget atm and, correct me if I'm wrong, due to my limited CPU it wont be too much of a difference on the current build.

Edit: Yes I'm tempted to do that overclock (get a decent cooler first) and i ve read plenty of stuff here all that remains is to man up and actually do it. Which i'm not too comfortable unfortunately.

 

[rolandzhang3]

A 660 would bottleneck the stock E8400, and depending on price difference, you could take a look at a 7770/650ti/7790

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yes, the HD 7790 is at a very attractive price right now and if you can't get the CPU to a gameable level (let's face it, 2 cores is not enough for BF3, nevermind BF4), then your best bet would be an AMD FX-6300 and an ASRock 970 Pro3 motherboard. You would also need about 8GB of RAM for BF4. That's what all the test sites say. I don't know for sure because I run 12GB of RAM (16GB-4GB Ramdisk for swapping).