Gaming Machine - What to Upgrade?

[1ceHacka]

I am running a few different machines, one of which I am looking to upgrade some of the components. I just purchased, but have not installed, 4GB GSkill 1066 DDR2 and a 250GB SATA drive for the machine. The following is what is CURRENTLY installed:

ASROCK ALIVE NF6G-VSTA
AMD 64 X2 4800+
2GB GSkill DDR2
80GB IDE
NVIDIA 8800GS OC

I am trying to alleviate (and create new) bottlenecks in this system. Obviously the HDD was a big one, trying to move that up the ladder with the SATA drive. The RAM could also be an issue, so that is being upgraded. I am also looking to move to a 64 bit OS. My question is will the video card or the processor become the next bottleneck? Or will it still be the HDD? Thanks in advance for your comments.

 

[WildW]

I'd say the CPU would be the next. . . is the 4800 a 2.4GHz chip? (My memory is lousy)

Certainly my 2.3GHz X2 (Brisbane core) bottlenecked my 4670, let alone a 8800GS - saw a big improvement in gaming performance when I overclocked the CPU.

 

[1ceHacka]

I have the CPU OC'ed to 2.77 right now, but its not rock stable. I just took the voltage up small tick from stock, and so I will see if that helps the stability of the system at all. If not, the board supports both AM2 and AM2+, so I will probably move to a phenom before long. I want to do this in stages and not blow a huge load of money in today's world.

 

[Denithor]

Hope you're not referring to a Phenom I chip there, boyo - those suck donkey balls for gaming.

Upgrade the GPU next, when it's time for a new CPU - it's time for a full rebuild.