Any cheap upgrades available for me?

[SLiGuy]

Hey guys,

My current PC is pretty outdated at the moment (specs in signature). I'm moving out to attend another university soon and I don't have the funds to do a completely new build, but I was wondering if there are any cheap upgrades that I could possible do to help me get a little up to speed. I haven't really been keeping up with tech news so I'm not sure what's going on out there right now.

I'd be willing to spend maybe $2-300 on upgrades. The only game I really play is BF3 and a bit of WoW. Are there any budget or mid-range CPUs/graphics cards out there that won't hurt the wallet too much, but will still give me a noticeable upgrade over my current setup?

Thanks for your time everyone.

 

[Dangman]

Are you still using that 19" monitor?

 

[SLiGuy]

Actually, no. I'm using this 21" Dell display now.

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-S2230MX-21-5-Inch-LED-lit-Monitor/dp/B005ZPEQRS

All the internal specs are up-to-date, though.

 

[Dangman]

Then I recommend this:
$185 - Sapphire HD 7870 GHz OC 2GB PCI-E Video Card
$90 - Samsung 840 120GB SSD
---
Total: $275 shipped.

That SSD should speed up the system by quite a bit. As for the video card, it should easily twice the performance of the HD 5770 you have now. Hell even three times the performance.