Help a peasant decide!

[Tical]

Sheesh, been over 2 years since I last posted here. Anyway.

I'm using a rather archaic rig right now.

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Socket AM2 (single core)
4gb DDR2 Ram
Radeon HD 4850
ASUS Nodusm3 Socket AM2 mobo.

I'm basically looking for a quick fix to performance issues until I can afford to properly upgrade my computer at the latter end of this year. What I want to know is how big of a performance increase would I get if I upgraded my CPU to a AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ or another type of dual core Socket AM2 processor. Would it be a huge difference in games such as Fable 3, Left for Dead 2 etc. I know it still wont let me play decently on max settings, that's not what I'm looking for until I fully upgrade.

If I left any details out, my bad. Let me know and i'll post what I can.

Thanks!

 

[munz]

You dont mention a budget but for £167.98 ya can get phenom x4 and am3+ mobo

Asus M5A88-M AMD 880G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £77.99
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" £89.99

there are cheaper AM3+ motherbaords but they are out of stock/ pre -order currently thats cheapest in stock.

This allows you to get a good boost in performance + easy upgrade to bulldozer CPU when they come out.
AM3+ boards are compatible with new bulldozer amd cpu that havent been released yet.

this cpu is unlocked so if you grab a cpu cooler you can overclock it to further boost performance.

you would have to get some ddr3 ram i cant see any AM3+ motherboards that work with DDR2 ram but this can be had cheaply enough if you go for 4gb of 1333mhz ram.

 

[Reaper 392]

with the spec posted above you would also need to buy more RAM, as it is only compatable with DDR3 RAM, not the DDR2 RAM you have.

AMD option
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £89.99
1 x Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £54.98
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £31.19
Total : £176.16 (includes shipping: FREE).

this would give you the option to upgrade to bulldozer in the future

intel option

Intel option
1 x MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** *WITH FREE MSI GRENADE* £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium G620 2.60GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £54.98
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £31.19
Total : £157.56 (includes shipping : £9.50).

this would allow you to upgrade to any intel sandybridge processor, but will not allow overclocking

depending on what you would like from the final PC, you will probably want to change the motherboard in that second spec