Upgrading pc for gaming, help needed!

[Tim Garland]

I'm currently upgrading my families old pc so I can use it to play games (predominantly modded skyrim) but hopefully more recent titles too, the specs are as follows:

mobo - gigabyte ep45 extreme
cpu - intel core 2 quad Q8200 @ 2.33ghz
gpu - geforce 9500 GT
ram - 4GB

I'm trying to keep the budget as low as possible (around £400) so at the moment I'm considering getting an MSI AMD 280X gpu and upgrading the ram to 16GB, leaving the cpu to upgrade when I have more money...

My question is will this cause serious bottlenecking with the cpu?
Any other suggestions for more cost effective upgrades?

 

[James Mason]

you don't need 16 gbs, 8 is enough.
a new GPU will help you alot.
Your CPU should be okay for skyrim, just not really ENB grade.

 

[Tim Garland]

you don't need 16 gbs, 8 is enough.
a new GPU will help you alot.
Your CPU should be okay for skyrim, just not really ENB grade.

Excellent thanks!
What about newer games like BF4?

 

[James Mason]

BF4 shouldn't be that much different, your CPU is decent enough for it as well, maybe not the highest settings though as it's a fairly CPU bound game, but you can run it with fairly little.
But uhh, makesure your PSU can support a r9 280x, they're pretty power hungry