PC Upgrade, need motherboard help

[Evolv]

I have an Acer Aspire e360 with a mATX Foxconn 6150K8MA-8EKRS and a AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200. I'm thinking about upgrading the motherboard and cpu for gaming. I play COD4, CS, Oblivion, and others but recently I noticed it's been slow, compared to my cousins Duo e6550. I have a OCZ 600W PSU, and a EVGA 7950gt KO in it already. I want a AM2 chipset, not really interested in AM2+ after time I'll probably go Intel. I want to keep the upgrade below $250.

I was thinking one of these for a CPU:
Newegg.com - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Brisbane 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor - CPUs / Processors

Newegg.com - AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Black Edition Processor - CPUs / Processors

For mother boards I was thinking:
Newegg.com - ASUS M2A-VM AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

And for ram I was just going to get the 2gig GSkill DDR2 800. Let me know what you guys think.

 

[NightSurge]

Well here is the trick about AMD CPU's. The number beside them usually is a reference to their Intel counterpart with which it competes with. So if you want something that competes with an Intel Core 2 Duo 6550, you would be stuck with getting a 6000+ or 6400+. Yeah they may have higher clock speeds (3-3.2GHz of the AMD as compared to the 2.33GHz of the C2D 6550), but the Intel cores still run much faster and are far more advanced.

If you want a good board:
Newegg.com - BIOSTAR TForce TF8200 A2+ AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

I was thinking about getting this one for a future budget AMD build of mine. It sports great onboard graphics and even supports hybrid SLI with any nVidia card that supports it.

Then I would say your best bet would be to spend a bit more and get a 6000+ or 6400+ Black Edition. Plus you will need a new graphics card very soon as even the high end 7000 series cards will only put out medium settings on the newest games.

 

[Evolv]

Thanks for the info. That board looks pretty good, I'll be over clocking and it sounds like it has decent bios features. I don't know if I want to spend that much on 6000 or 6400+ though. I'm not really trying to keep up with my cousin's e6550. But I've been planning on getting a new video card as well, maybe around fall or winter. I'm looking into the 8800 GTS G92, seems to be the best bang for your buck.

 

[NightSurge]

It is a very good card. I just have to warn you that even a 5000+ will show some slight bottle-necking with that GPU, but probably not enough to really decrease your enjoyment of games.

 

[Evolv]

Ah yes that is true, didn't really think about that. Yea I might end up with the 6000+ Is there any up coming new releases from AMD or Nvidia? I would hate to get all this stuff, and then they'll have something new come out and cause prices to drop.

 

[thirdshiftdj]

stick w/ the 5000+ black edition. It will oc to the 6000+

 

[Evolv]

Yea, I've been reading reviews and people are overclocking it up to 3.2ghz That's pretty good, the only difference between them is the L2 cache. Is there any noticable difference between the 90nm and the 65nm processors?

 

[maroon1]

I want to keep the upgrade below $250.

For under $250, you can get this

CPU
Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz 3MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - CPUs / Processors

Motherboard
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

or

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-P35-S3G LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

And this will be better than both 6400+ and your cousins E6550

 

[Redmo0n]

I agree with maroon.

The e7200 can be oced to 4.0ghz on air, i would recommend ocing it to about 2.8-3.2ghz.

 

[Evolv]

Yea, I was also thinking going Intel. For the money their CPU's are awsome.