Upgrade - when?

[tigerstyle]

I suspect this might be better off in graphics but... is the only difference between 4870 models the level of memory on the board?

yes, and the cooler design, and some will come pre overclocked, but as they are all the same chips, and the bios of each card is easily flashed to any number of custom bios it's not worth any bother paying more

I'm at the moment planning on a 4850, and will be buying a pre overclocked card, but thats just because it has a nice quiet heatpipe cooler already fitted, HIS IceQ AFAIK they do a 4870 version of that too.

 

[Ben M]

I suspect this might be better off in graphics but... is the only difference between 4870 models the level of memory on the board?

Warranty, reputation of quality of customer care, pretty picture on the card, bundled games, sometimes cooler,

 

[wod_uk]

from the spec you have i would say upgrade the graphics card to something like a 4870 and maybe a psu upgrade too if your going to run a high end card

 

[Shaolin Chicken]

It would seem mad to change a P35 mobo now, as you said, it's perfectly functional and stable. I'd get an ati 4870 now, and wait until Bloomfield and X58 mobos to change your motherboard, as they are a new socket.

Your current board supports 16x and 4x crossfire (slot 1 runs at 16x, slot 2 at 4x) I think it is pci-e 1.0 though.

Your cpu isn't holding you back in games, your gpu is the ebst bang for buck to see improvements. It'd definately be worth taking an afternoon to get your cpu running a nice overclock, though.

Completely agree with Ben M.