2.5 yr old build, looking to upgrade

[ChrisJKop]

Hello all! I built my first PC in April 2012:
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/ChrisJKop/saved/GjpV3C
The MB isn't listed on PCPartPicker anymore but it is an ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271%5C
I'm hoping to play a lot of DA:Inquisition and it doesn't look my HD6950 doesn't meet the recommended specs. My current strategy is to upgrade my video card and other components as necessary, to last me 2-3 years until I do a new build my scratch. ~$300 seems about right for a new card, but I'm flexible depending on what gives me good bang for my buck. Maybe a GTX 970 or R9 290?
I like to play games at high/ultra settings to really enjoy the developer's work but I don't necessarily play the most taxing games on the market (My most recent games are Divinity: Original Sin, FFXIV: ARR, Diablo III, Battlefield 3, Deadspace 3). I play at 1080p but I haven't felt the need to go multiple monitors, is it worth trying to get more resolution on a 24''? SSD could probably use an upgrade as well.
Let me know what you think my holes/bottlenecks are. Thanks for your thoughts and feedback!

 

[yumri]

you will most likely not see any improvement at all with a SSD upgrade as the ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 does not support anything faster than SATA 6Gbps and most SSD max out that transfer speed already that are using the SATA Controller.
for a GPU i will say the 970 or if you can a R9 290X as they are about the same in preformance just if you go with the 970 you will have to uninstall the AMD drivers and install nVidia driversbut otherwise that should be it both of them are able to max out 1080p on most games except for a few unoptimized titles like AC: Unity and the like but that is an issue with the game engine not the card and what you say it will be able to max it out at a study 60+ fps in all of them as long as you download the drivers as the generic drivers will not work that well with the higher end cards while gaming.

 

[ChrisJKop]

Thanks Yumri for your answer! I hadn't thought about my motherboard being a bottleneck for SSD. If I upgrade, I'll just do it for capacity. I'll take a look at the 970 and 290X, I know 970's are in short supply nowadays so the 290X might be a good deal. I appreciate the feedback.

 

[yumri]

Thanks Yumri for your answer! I hadn't thought about my motherboard being a bottleneck for SSD. If I upgrade, I'll just do it for capacity. I'll take a look at the 970 and 290X, I know 970's are in short supply nowadays so the 290X might be a good deal. I appreciate the feedback.

I think you read what i said wrong. I said the SATA Controller logic is a choke point for virtually all the SSD that came out in the latter half of this year while getting a SSD will increase loading times for programs and files also write times for when you are saveing a file / game save the SSD will not do anything more than that.
The GTX970s are not in short supply and you should be able to get 1 or if you like the R9 290X more go with that just remember that mantle slows down higher end Intel CPUs for a unknown reason .... probalby hyperthreading.