Looking to upgrade my desktop, would like some advice.

[Evilbookworm]

I mostly play RTS games, though a bit of fallout. Mostly want to be able to run shogun 2 well and quickly, empire without 3 minutes to load a battle, and large supcom battles without slowdown.

I have this right now:

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131299

Power supply:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817702003

CPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037

Video Card:
ATI 4800 512 mb. (dunno why it's not on the wishlist that I had archived)

and 3362 mb (4gig) ram.


Trying to stay fairly cheap, no more than about 300 for any one part, definitely prefer to stay under 200, I figure my video card and my ram, maybe my processor as well for supcom? Not sure which would be more important since there's so many units.


Mostly I need to know which part needs upgrading first, cause if I can get away with just the RAM that's great, but I figure I'll need to upgrade more soon, so I just wanted to know .

Also, is passmarksoftware reliable? Their benchmarks seem useful, but I have no idea.


thanks all.


Quick edit: I forgot to mention, that based off the information under "best graphics cards for the money" I was looking at the ATI 6870. Specifically this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161349

Since I can't tell the difference between them with the same numbers, and that one has a game I want for free and the most good reviews. The problem is I don't know if it'll work with my motherboard, since... well, I just don't know if I'm missing something.

 

[jmsellars1]

RTS games tend to be quite CPU dependant, it's probably that which is holding you back. Maybe try overclocking it or pick up a cheap Q6600 or something.