Scratching the Upgrade Itch - £500

[Flapper]

Hello all,

I have the upgrade itch, with about £500 to spend.

I currently have:

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.00ghz
Gigabyte P31 board
4GB DDR II Ram
Radeon HD4850 1GB
Akasa 500w Powersupply.

We use the PC for all sorts of things. Particularly I’d like to improve performance on Battlefield Bad Company 2, and I suspect the CPU is holding me back in this game. I’ve considered 2 upgrade options. Option 1 is slightly more ‘budget’ but includes a 60GB SSD for Windows and (a few) games. Option 2 is slightly classier. Which would you go for? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Suggestions welcomed.

Option 1

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GH - £117.49 inc VAT
MSI 770-C45 AMD 770 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard - £49.98 inc VAT
Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - £70.49 inc VAT
Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic 1024MB GDDR5 - £164.49 inc VAT
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive - £103.39 inc VAT

£505.84


OR

Option 2

Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - £146.86 inc VAT
Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 Intel P55 - £87.98 inc VAT
Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - £70.49 inc VAT
Palit GeForce GTX 460 Sonic 1024MB GDDR5 - £164.49 inc VAT

£469.82

[I should say I game at 1680x1050]

 

[Jony27]

just wait it out dude
try and keep it until the mainstream sandy bridge comes out
it will be worth it + once the mainstream SB are out prices of the 6xxx shouldve started falling by a bit

 

[danewesley]

you can either wait, but i like option 1 and think an ssd is a great upgrade but personally with the use you stated the only benefit from the ssd would be load times, so at the moment i think your best bet would be to upgrade the things that would make the gaming experience even better.

Option 1 AMD:

Option 2 Intel: