yes - appealing to forumites that know better than I - my desktop is due an upgrade...

I had to replace the PSU in it last week, and I now have the itch, what should I upgrade next?

specs

ASUS P5B motherboard
intel Core2 Duo E6600 processor
4Gb DDR2 333mhz Memory
250GB hard drive
Nvidia 8800 GTS
Windows 7 64-bit

Its definitely getting a bit long in the tooth, but I cant really afford a full overhaul, so I'm looking for best 'bang for buck' upgrade. I'm currently thinking better memory and graphics card upgrade....

Thoughts please anyone?

Are you running a 64bit System and using a lot of 64bit Software? If not, leave the RAM alone, as 32bit does not support more than 4 GB. This is absolutely sufficient in my opinion.

sorry yeah - should have said - Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit , not using a whole load of 64-bit software though

I would recommend a bigger HD. It won't boost your performance, but it is so much less of a hassle. I currently have 1 TB + 2 TB external and I hardly uninstall games anymore. Music and Movies/TV Shows are all on my external, so I can use this with my netbook while on the road.

HD prices have surged recently however, so you might want to wait a bit. but 250 GB is really unconvenient to use.

Which games/applications are you using?

If the CPU is irrelevant for the games you play, then a graphics card update is worth a consideration, provided your new PSU can support it. Currently the nVidia 560 or 560 Ti (or equivalent ATI model) has the best performance-per-price ratio of gaming cards.

If you're using more CPU dependent applications, then you could use a new CPU (like an i5 2500), but that would involve getting a new motherboard and memory as well. It _is_ a pretty good CPU though.

The hard drive is rather small, but I wouldn't upgrade it this year unless absolutely necessary, the prices are just too high.

you could put windows on a ssd , supposed to make your windows alot faster.

I was thinking I'd quite like to play Skyrim at a decent frame rate - my PSU is 680 W so shouldnt be a problem...

which leads to another question - biggest bottleneck - processor or Graphics card??

In gaming only the loading times, the games won't run faster.

Looking at you CPU, an upgrade won't be valid there as, CPU's for that socket are overpriced, if they are even available.

I didn't think they ever made 333mhz DDR2 memory, or is that true 333mhz rated at 666mhz? Or is it the bus speed?
I probably wouldn't upgrade that, as the perfomance increase won't be very noticable and 8GB would be overkill if you put it in that computer. There aren't many games that use more than 2GB, and with the ones that you'll sooner run into CPU or GPU limitations.

The videocard is most viable to upgrade, but it all depends at which resolutions you play, as the CPU will be a bottleneck in more modern games.
Around €100/$110/(Pound sterling unknown to me :P) you could for example get an AMD 6770, which is somewhat similar to a nVidia GTX275/GTX285 depending on the game, which is about 2x the performance of what you have now. It's enough to run Skyrim at very decent settings.
For a little more you could get a 6870, which is more than enough to run Skyrim at max settings.
You could go for a GTX560, but that's at least twice the price and your CPU will bottleneck the hell out of it. At higher resolutions you'll notice a big difference though (and you'll have physx, if that means anything these days)

How does Skyrim run on your current rig?

Probably both ... but it's hard to tell for me. Skyrim is one of the most CPU-dependent games on the market (if we exclude obviously CPU reliant genres like strategy). Both your CPU and GPU are rather old ... still acceptable for many games, but probably not for Skyrim, unless you want to reduce your details way down.

There are too many variables in this equation. It's probably best if you start to play Skyrim, fiddle around with the settings, and then tell us where you want improvement. I'd probably run some monitoring program alongside Skyrim for a while, so that I can see whether my CPU and/or GPU are constantly maxed out.

I havent played Skyrim!!

I just naturally assumed my current rig wouldn't be able to cope with it - I have to turn everything way down in Witcher 2 and even Oblivian chugs along on occasion...

My res is 1920 x 1080

The memory is DDR2 PC2-5300 - DRAM frequency is 333.6MHz.

The Hard drive upgrade we can strike out for now - prices are way up because of the flooding in the manufacturing countries (Tiawan mainly). So can hold off on that for now.

Memory - i guess the 4GB is adequate for now as well..

So - GPU and CPU....not really wanting to invest in a whole new Motherboard, wonder what the top CPU the current one will use...I'll have to look that up.

GPU - looking nvidia (always had them for some reason, a creature of habit I am!), so I guess a 560 or 560ti - now to price some stuff up!!

Thanks for all the help / suggestions so far, much appreciated!

It depends if he overclocked it. My CPU, a Q6600 overclocked to 3ghz, which is the E6600 x2 runs Skyrim very well in combination with a HD5850 @1680x1050, 4xAA, 8xAF, rest max detail and a few visual enhancing mods.
As Skyrim only uses 2 cores, theoretically, his E6600 @ 3ghz would run Skyrim just as well (that's 30-60fps, where 30 is the lowest I've seen with the latest patch)

:edit: Skyrim runs much better than Oblivion on my rig. Oblivion barely uses a second core, while Skyrim uses 2 cores + many other engine improvements. I could even use a mod that ads 10-15 npc's to cities without a framerate hit! In Oblivion my fps would plummet when I installed mods like that.

You might not be using a lot of 64bit software BUT the 4gb memory limit includes the GPU's memory so if you have 4gb & a 1gb GPU then you're not using 1gb of your RAM.

I'd recommend upgrading the graphics card out of all that lot. I had an almost identical spec (same cpu, quantity of ram, gpu) to you and found upgrading the 8800GTS was the best thing to do first, followed a few months later by the cpu. Games nowadays largely prioritize GPU over CPU at the moment, especially the lazy console ports.

But he uses a 64bit windows, so that limit isn't there. Skyrim is already updated to be able to use more than 2gb, even if it's a 32bit program.

I know.... I was just explaining that even though he's not using 64bit apps, it's still worth him having. A lot of people don't realise that the 4tgb limit factors in GPU memory too.

go for a better gpu, if you have spare cash left, add 4 gb of ram, nvidia 470 or 570 should do the trick ;)