Help w/ Upgrading options

I'm currently Running:
MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
ASUS EAH5830 DIRECTCU/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5830 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16
AMD Phenom II X2 545 Callisto 3.0GHz Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Processor
4x Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3N9/2G
and I'm considering upgrading.

Should I look at just getting a new CPU and add'l / new GPU, or upgrade whole system to newer lower end stuff?
Trying to stay inside of a $300 budget range and have a system that smoothly runs a 5x multibox.

Oh also, what are my options for SSD vs. Mag these days?
I've been waiting for there to be a price drop since I've looked into it.

[MiRai]

Depending on what you want to do with the machine I would say it's most likely time for an upgrade. A lot of that hardware is 2+ years old and it wasn't top-of-the-line when it was new; so, I'm sure that it's definitely feeling its age.

As for SSD vs Mag (assuming that's short for Magnetic or HDD), SSDs are at an all time low and you can find most drives to be less than $1/GB.

I'm currently Running:
MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
ASUS EAH5830 DIRECTCU/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5830 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16
AMD Phenom II X2 545 Callisto 3.0GHz Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Processor
4x Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3N9/2G
and I'm considering upgrading.

Should I look at just getting a new CPU and add'l / new GPU, or upgrade whole system to newer lower end stuff?
Trying to stay inside of a $300 budget range and have a system that smoothly runs a 5x multibox.

I am not sure on AMD side or Radeon as I have always stuck to Nvidia / Intel. But I would imagine at least a good 8 Core or OC 4 Core processors and in the high 6000 or 7000 series Radeon, might have to have low graphics though. But at 300 bucks not alot of upgrading I think you could do, don't hold me to this however as I don't favor AMD / Radeon.

This box is actually running 3x clients pretty well. Well enough I was surprised.
Main screen w/ High graphics settings, and the other 2 on low still nets around 35-40 FPS, w/ very minimal drops between switching. (22.5 is lowest i've seen)
I'm thinking a very cheap upgrade to a Phenom II quad core, maybe upping to 12g ram, and a GPU upgrade would make it run 5x fine. (which is the max I'd probably run anyways)
And I'll check out an OS SSD HD.

Currently Looking at:


So for $390 shipped it puts me into a quadcore, 16g ram, a GTX550 1g with a possible extra GPU (ASUS 5830 1g) in the other PCI-e x16 2.1 port, and a SSD OS HD.
The DVD drive is for another computer I just built not realizing there were no EIDE ports on the new MB... lol :-p Technology is silly.


So, If you think my $400 is best spent elsewhere, feel free to supply suggestions.
I would probably prefer not to platform switch also. Never had great luck w/ the Intel systems I've run over the years.

[MiRai]

Intel has been beating AMD for 5 years now, ever since they released the Core2Duo and Core2Quad chips and Intel is currently handing AMD their ass in 90% of benchmarks with no relief in sight for AMD.

As for your system, I wouldn't recommend most of it.

CPU

• Currently 3 years old and was on par with the Intel i7 920 which was released 8 months earlier (Dec '08)

SSD

• Uses a Sandforce controller which was a major cause of problems in SSDs
• 60GB is b-a-r-e-l-y enough space for both the OS and a game like World of Warcraft
• Check the Corsair forums for the numerous Force series problems

Video Card

• 550 Ti is not an upgrade from a 5830

And here's why...



Even a GTX 460 is better than a 550 Ti. Just because a video card is sold 2 years later doesn't actually make it an upgrade as you can see from the video card horsepower chart listed above. My recommendation for 5 boxing World of Warcraft (at a minimum) will be a GTX 560 with, at the very least, 1GB of VRAM.

The only way you would run 5 WoW clients fine with your system above (and expect a good framerate) would be if you disabled instant swapping.

Good info MiRai, ya i guess i should of asked what he is tryihg to 5 box. Ya i def would support the 560 on that, remember you can always use amazon for some good graphics card upgrades sometimes I see 560 for 200 bucks even got my wife a 580 3gb for 300 on there recently.