Budget PC Upgrades

[Morbo666]

I'm considering some upgrades for my PC and I'd like to keep the cost somewhat low, hopefully $500-600 but I could go maybe a little higher if it were worth it.. Here's what I'm working with now:

OS - Vista64
CPU - E8500 3.16GHz Dual-Core
GPU - Buggy 4870
Mobo - LGA775 Socket
Ram - 4GB DDR2 800
PSU - 850 Watt
Case - Antec 900
HDD - Some company 500GB 7200RPM
Optical Drive - Some company DVDRW/CDRW that was $20

Some things I think I can keep such as the PSU, Case, and HDD. Everything else I'm looking to upgrade and maybe to get Win7. I'm also looking to replace the optical drive since the icon keeps disappearing and then it won't work, can't seem to fix it. Since it's a "budget" upgrade I was leaning towards an AMD build, although I do have a microcenter near me. It looks like I can get a quad-core AMD CPU for 125-150 and a Mobo for 100-125. RAM is easy enough just some DDR3 4GB for now. I was thinking of getting a lower-end Nvidia GPU just to hold me over for the next 6-12 months since I won't be doing anything that would require a high end card right now. I don't want to buy a nice card for reasons that are 6+ months down the road. I've looked at some setups and it looks like I could keep it in the 500-600 range. I hope I covered everything, any suggestions welcome.

[Dmitry]

I may have an MSI 870A-G54 AM3 motherboard to sell if you are interested. I will let you know, depending on how long it takes for a replacement to arrive for me.

[xopher]

Crossfire Radeon 6870 is the best performance for the buck you can get right now. For $480 you can smoke just about any card on the market, short of the new GTX 500 series and the Radeon 69xx series.

[CoronA1979]

Crossfire Radeon 6870 is the best performance for the buck you can get right now. For $480 you can smoke just about any card on the market, short of the new GTX 500 series and the Radeon 69xx series.

The only concern with a new generation GPU is the possibility of the CPU the OP has bottlenecking the card thus not getting the performance from it one would expect.

My suggestion would be definately move to a quad core CPU (I prefer Intel but if AMD is where your budget lies then that's fine). As for the GPU's I would say for how you have described it just snag yourself a GTX 460. If I had to recommend a brand it would be EVGA. If you want to SLI them later down the road, you're all set. 2x GTX 460 is equal or better than a single GTX 480. Just keep in mind that you can not go above 2 way SLI w/ the 460's. If you ever wanted to run a tri or quad sli setup you would need a GTX 470 or above. I run 2x GTX 470 in SLI and am perfectly content and will likely not be jumping on the upgrade bandwagon when the 570's come out.

TLDR - New MOBO, CPU, and a GTX 460. If you have money left over I would suggest a small SSD drive to put Windows and a few apps on. It's arguably the most noticeable upgrade that can be made to a system that has mechanical HDD's.