A rambling collection of upgrade questions...

[amateur viking]

Hey folks, I built the system (below) this time last year based on your sterling advice and a lot of lurking around the internets.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1024MB
4Gb DDR3 1600Mhz
Asus M4A79XTD Evo socket AM3
Phenom II 555 BE (conservative OC of 3.6 Ghz) w/ a fenrir for cooling
WD Caviar Black 640GB SATA-II

All wrapped up in a Lian Li PC-A05NB

I've since added a Xonar DX sound card and an OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB SATA-II SSD as a boot drive.

I use it mainly for gaming and uni work (which sometimes involves some reasonably hefty stat calculations). Current monitor is an HP 22" which has a native res of 1680x1050.

I have some (~£150 - £200) spare cash at the moment so I thought I'd look into some kind of upgrade for her. My current thinking is either a new videocard, CPU or monitor.

Some thoughts:

Is it worth just plonking another 5770 in CF in there? With my current monitor res is there any point upgrading? - it seems to manage ok at the moment. How well supported is CF?

How much functional difference would a Phenom II x4 make? (as for x6, I'm not sure I can find a use for the extra cores).

Would a new monitor running games at 1920 x 1080 expose my currently probably-only-just-adequate single HD 5770?

I'd appreciate any input! New hardware decisions are never easy

 

[amateur viking]

Firstly, with the CPU, have you tried unlocking the Phenom II 555's other cores?

Alas yes, no joy. Won't unlock even to a tri-core: sad times.

 

[amateur viking]

Interesting, I hadn't really considered whacking some more RAM in: I figured 4Gb was dandy. I shall investigate. Thanks for the advice!