Considering an upgrade. Pointers?

[tophee]

Hello,

My current rig is somewhat outdated and I was considering an upgrade. Though I'm feeling a little poor atm, so this might have to be on a budget

I've been getting into photo editing, 3d modelling with some desktop publishing recently and suddenly 4GB doesn't seem really enough. I do a fair bit of video encoding too.

I was considering upgrading to 8GB, but the price of DDR2 is getting exorbitant. I thought perhaps a full system refresh would be more 'economical'. Looking at what's out there I'm somewhat confused by the benifits / features of i5 vs. i7 etc. Perhaps what people recommend might be the way forward?

I'm rather out of touch with current tech - my current cpu is a q6600 bought when they were the chip to own for that price/performance sweet spot. I've 4GB Corsair ram in an Abit IX38 GTturbo mobo.

My gpu is more recent and I'll be keeping it for the present - a 1GB Nvidia 460GTX.

Don't really game.

Suggestion greatfully recieved. Perhaps looking sub-£500. Or as cheap as possible.

Thanks in advance and all that.

 

[tophee]

Wow, thanks for the quick responses (just the hour it took to get home).

Stoner81, have a reasonable monitor - Dell Ultrasharp U2311H 23" Widescreen LCD Monitor (didn't think the extra inch was worth the couple of hundred extra for the 24" version.) Case - still using my Akasa eclipse. In my opinion an absolute classic. And a logitech lazer mouse.

cmndr andi - It's the SLACR one. Did the SSD thing a while back, Vertex 60GB. And the link to the review is excellent.

stulid - oc already @ 3.4 or so and I'm a linux boy. Though still virtualise the odd edition of windows when wine doesn't do the apps I need.

Thanks for your input so far.