Earlier this year, I built my first rig. Admittedly, it was on a shoestring budget, so I did have to cut some corners. Now that I have a little (I stress: a little :P) bit of extra cash floating around, I'm stuck wondering which component should be upgraded, as I've noticed quite a few games hitting slow downs.

Rig is as follows:

Asus P45XE mobo
Pentium Dual Core E6300 - 2.80GHz
XFX GeForce 9800GT 512MB
4GB of RAM
(placeholder in case I have forgotten something)

Initially I gravitated towards a CPU upgrade, but I'd rather multitudinous opinions before I go through with it.

I can play games such as Mirror's Edge, Crysis, Mass Effect 2 etc. at perfectly playable 45-60fps (1280x1024 on a crt monitor. Seems to fit the monitor the best), but they all do drop to a very unpleasant 25-27fps occasionally. Keep in mind that I'm probably only going to be able to upgrade one component. Just point me in the right direction and I'll figure something out from there. :P

Well, the first thing you can do is to use your hdtv that's 1080p, upgrade your monitor because a crt is trash by today's standards. You can also save money by overclocking the cpu and getting a heatsink for it. Lastly I suppose the videocard is just a rebranded 8800GT. You can always upgrade that if you want.

"

Well, the first thing you can do is to use your hdtv that's 1080p, upgrade your monitor because a crt is trash by today's standards. You can also save money by overclocking the cpu and getting a heatsink for it. Lastly I suppose the videocard is just a rebranded 8800GT. You can always upgrade that if you want.

"

I'd say it would be a toss up between your video card or your CPU. Or you could really splurge and go for an SSD. They're a great investment, and you'll definitely a large increase in performance. However SSD's are still a bit pricy, so it would depend on what your budget is.

I just thought of this, how about overclocking that videocard of yours, it's free and it will give you a few more frames. Yet it will produce alot of heat because that videocard has a very lousy heatsink, however that's another option. I mean you were going to upgrade a component anyways and maybe that would help with the slowdowns. 
 
Lol crt monitor, that's so year 2000 and before.

I agree with upgrading your processor. A lot of games are more CPU dependent.

" I agree with upgrading your processor. A lot of games are more CPU dependent. "

I'd recommend a new GPU over a new CPU. 

looks like it's a cpu upgrade then, i suppose. i'll probably upgrade my gpu further down the line. thanks guys.

edit: i'll try overclocking my gpu. i have a few other cooling sources lying around somewhere, anyway.