Whats my best upgrade option? cpu or video card?

[lotharjade]

What is my best upgrade option for gaming? Moving from a Dual Core CPU to a Quad Core CPU (while sticking with my motherboard), or upgrading my video card roughly one level? I have the following:

1. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ x 2 CPU
2. AMD ATI Radeon HD 6670 video card
3. TF8200 A2+ Ver. 5.x which I am stuck with for now.

Basically I can afford one upgrade at the moment, and am curious what would be the best bang for the buck. Also, my main game I like to play is Star Trek Online (STO) if that makes a difference.

[niowluka]

I wouldn't bother upgrading cpu on such old mobo. I'd put away more and replace both cpu and mobo.

Graphic card is not too shabby either, but depends what you use the pc for.

[lotharjade]

My main use for this computer besides websurfing, is playing Star Trek Online (that's what is most important to me). I have had difficulty of late (the game is somewwhat laggy), and have had to resort to a family members computer. I was hoping a CPU upgrade would be enough to keep me in the game. If only CPU prices would depreciate more over time. I thought just jumping to a quad core of the same era CPU would be rather affordable improvement at this point. The prices still seem a tad high though for being what, 5 years later?

Would a new motherboard really make that much difference here? I thought CPU and Video Cards were where the big performance jumps could be made. I had been thinking going to an AMD Phenom II x4 of some sort that would work on my motherboard.

[konjad]

I don't know that game, but MMOs are usually CPU intensive, so you might want to upgrade that. However if the game is 32 bit you won't see much improvement with more cores and the latency of a single core is more important.

[niowluka]

In your case new mobo would make a big difference, but of course you would need to replace the whole unit (mobo + cpu + ram).

It seems the fastest cpu you can get for this mobo is a quad core 3.2G. It will be an improvement, but by how much is difficult to say. And you will struggle to get one of those these days.

Maybe you can find some performance elsewhere. What ram do you have ? And what Mint are you running ? Also, if the lagging is new, and did not happen before, it could mean hardware failures are creeping in (e.g. hdd, memory).

[crazypj]

Unless the game is 'written' for multi core CPU you won't see much if any improvement, it's running on whatever the fastest core you have
In my experience a better video card will show a noticeable improvement.
Lag can also be ISP problem, particularly at certain times of day (my internet slows to a crawl around 5:30pm, even though it shouldnt)
I know ISP has real fast service to businesses about 1/2 mile away but 'my street' has probably 30+yr old copper? lines, when all the kids go online it's a problem (I also think they 'throttle back our area? as when I complain it works great the rest of the day)

[lotharjade]

My internet connection likely isn't the issue. I can use a family members computer on the same line and it works fine.

I currently have Linux Mint 15, but I was thinking of upgrading here in a day or so (ugh...). Also I have 3.9 GiB of memory that is DDR2, and likely mid-range memory. Also the game has always had lag, but its gotten worse as they have upgraded the game. I wish they would get a Linux version going on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/9900/), but there is not love for Linux yet. I have no idea if the game is written for multi-core cpu's though.

Why does it get so hard to find the older CPU's? I would think they would start flooding the used market after 5 years time.
(Plus, to add to my grumbling, I wish the options for buying CPU's were a bit more clear cut. It just seems like a flood of conflicting data sometimes. Price vs. specs vs. performance vs. price vs. a bazzilion different places to shop. It paints a confusing picture at times.)

[crazypj]

I fitted an LGA771 into LGA775 mobo with the 'sticker' modification.
Xeon 4 core @3.16 is much faster than previous 2 core on some tasks, particularly if a lot of windows are open at the same time.
For the old games I play, 3 cores are doing other stuff in the background while I'm using single core for playing.
Better video card is a better option unless your playing multi thread games that can use more cores.
Xeon original price (about 6~7 yrs ago) was $999.00, I paid about $45.00 for used one off e-bay
I guess search e-bay or Amazon for used CPU and video card
Game should say if it's multi thread, depends how old it is, 2~3 yrs, maybe, 4yrs+, probably not