Advice needed on upgrading CPU

[RinRanRyan]

Hey there,

I bought this current PC from the website about a year ago and I feel I would like to upgrade the CPU as it is starting to not meet the minimum specifications of new games that are coming out and is bottlenecking the GPU.

The specs are as follows:

2.90 gigahertz AMD Athlon II X2 245
Windows 7 Home Premium (x64)
Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. M61PME-S2P
4096 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory
ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
400W Power Supply

I have looked at the motherboard and it downgrades hyperthreading or something with some CPUs but I really don't have a clue what that means!

So my question is, is this system possible to upgrade? What could it be upgraded to (if anything)?

Thanks a lot for any replies, much appreciated

 

[RinRanRyan]

Wow, thanks for the quick replies! Would my power supply be a limiting factor in what I could upgrade to? How easy is the process of installing a new CPU?

Thanks

 

[RinRanRyan]

Okay that sounds fair enough. Is my power supply sufficient to run the Athlon Quad cores?

 

[RinRanRyan]

I have just checked and it is a Corsair power supply so that should be fine. Once the CPU is installed, would I have to enter the BIOS and change any settings or is it a case of 1) Plug it in 2) Turn it on 3) Enters Windows?

 

[RinRanRyan]

Okay great thanks, I will look into the processors you recommended and hopefully get an upgrade.

Thanks for your help guys