what should be my next overclock/upgrade?

[Liamalxd]

right now i have an amd athlon x2 5000+ overclocked at 3.12ghz
i have 4gb of ddr2 800mhz ram,
i have 2 9600gt nvidia graphics cards running in sli that i have overclocked too... core speed: 721mhz
shader speed: 1802mhz
memory speed: 1007mhz ( both cards are running at this in sli)
and i have an asus m2n4-sli motherboard.

im just thinking since really the only thing i can physically upgrade is the processor to an amd athlon x2 6400+ at 3.2ghz what should i do next (keeping in mind i want to play the latest games too)
should i get the new processor or build a new tower altogether with motherboard etc? if so what do you recommend bearing in mind i woulden't mind a quad core processor, quad sli setup and like 16gb of 1800mhz ddr3 ram, maybe even an ssd drive ...

Let me know what you all think,
Thanks,
Liam.

 

[King Arthur]

You've not said what your PSU or HDD is.

Two things to remember...

A PSU is the most overlooked part of a computer in my experience, if its a cheap PSU or one that came with the case you have swap it out, change it to a corsair VX520 or a HX620W (the latter been modular), this will give you good future proofing a more stable rails to overclock with.

Next is the HDD, remember all games a loaded off this piece of kit. You could have the mac daddy of all CPU's and Memory etc but if you simply cant give it the information quick enough you soon get a bottle neck. If you can afford it get a OCZ vertex SSD, they have lots of awards and are very fast, other wise i would advise you get a nice large HDD that has 32MB cache and has good transfer speeds.

Of course the PSU wont many any seeable difference in your set up but may allow a better overclock, the HDD presuming the one you have is a older one that has 8 to 16MB cache and is 160 - 320GB is size, you would finder one of the new SSD's or more traditional 1TB drives give you a noticeable improvement. You could if you on a budget simply RAID your hard drives into a Strip as that would give benefits in speed too.

Phil

 

[jeckulz]

Is 1600mhz RAM available via your set-up?

But yeah, PSU seems to be a vital considderation.
What PSU have you got?

Are you running multiple HDDs in any RAID configs?

 

[Liamalxd]

thanks for the reply guys.

i have a G7 power extreme psu 580watt.
and a 500gb seagate 7200rpm hdd.

i was thinking about getting an ssd drive but theyre goddamn expensive for the space you get on them, but in the end ill probably end up getting one.

also i have a 580watt psu but the voltages are stable which indicates no lack of power since they donlt go up/down under load.