Best upgrade path?

[Abyss of Borg]

What do you guys think the best upgrade path for me is? I have my specs in my sig. I'm not sure what I should do. I know for sure I will get a bigger case for better cooling and a video card upgrade, but in terms of the actual hardware I'm not sure. Do you think a 2.4 ghz Opteron 165 will bottleneck an 8800? Will 500 watts be enough to power it? I was looking into faster DDR1 ram but with the prices it just doesn't seem worth it. Most of them are more then I paid for my original processor. Also I was wondering how long until Quad core becomes mainstream and games take advantage of it? I'm not exactly sure about budget but I guess $300ish seems reasonable.

 

[BGK]

I would say new vidcard is best for you, anything else aside from a whole new motherboard/cpu/ram just doesnt seem worth it. My guess for quads is another year, given that they wont even become affordable until the price cuts this july.

 

[Dangman]

Dude, your system is plenty fast enough. Can you play all your games at decent settings? if so, then stay with your system until you find that one game that your system just chugs playing. Thats when you upgrade. Oh and save up some more money. You may have to buy an entirely new PC.

As for when will quad core become mainstream, it'll be a while. Many programs and games won't take advantage of dual core CPUs let alone a quad core CPU. So it'll be a long time before quad-core CPUs become mainstream. Hell, people are barely getting into dual core CPUs.

And wattage does not matter that much anymore. It all depends on how much amps the power supply has on its rails. Browse the power supply sub forum here for more info. Also check out this site for power supply reviews and hit up it's forums as well:
www.jonnyguru.com

For now, if you feel that you need a bit more GPU horsepower, then pick up the x1950Pro. It is a DX9 card but DX10 and DX10 games won't become really mainstream till next year. By this time next year, there'll probably be better DX10 cards than the 8800GTS and for a much cheaper price.

 

[engiNURD]

You've already got 2GB of ram. Push your CPU a bit higher if you think its too slow. It should reach 2.6 - 2.8Ghz easily. The only upgrade you should need is a vidcard upgrade. Though, as previously mentioned, if no games are running slow for you, don't bother yet. I also agree that quadcore's wont be needed until next year at the earliest, as far as desktop usage and gaming goes.