Okay so here's my plan, and wanted someone else's opinion on this.
First off, here is my computer atm. As you can tell it's pretty shit.
CPU - Intel Pentium D 820 2.80GHz
RAM - 2gigs PNY DDR2 PC2-5300 (DDR2 667)
Graphics Card - PNY Verto NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT PCIe
Power Supply - RocketFish 550w (Model # RF-550WPS)
Operating System - Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit
Resolution - 1680x1050
WoW Settings - Full low
In raids I get about 10-20fps, and that's with barely ANY addons running, and my combat log turned off. It's pretty apparent that my CPU is bottlenecking my system. Right now I'm working with a tight budget of about 250$, and looking to bump up my FPS to about 60-70 in raids if possible. With this upgrade, I'll be upgrading my OS to Windows 7 64-bit, and hopefully in a few months, get better RAM.
I was looking at AMD because it seems I would get more performance for a bit cheaper cost. Right now my budget is at about 250$. So here is the CPU and Mobo I was thinking about buying atm.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103471 - CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130265 - Mobo
The motherboard is going to work with my current ram it looks like, but I'll be upgrading to a faster set of 2x 2.0gig sticks. I'd probably use the default heatsink, and it looks like I could increase the speed of the CPU to 3.6ghz with the onboard switch, but would this be a bad idea with the stock heatsink I assume? I have an Antec 900 case, which has really good airflow however. Anyway, are these two going to give me the performance I'm looking for?
I'm hoping to have anywhere from 60-80 fps on medium-high settings (View Distance - Medium, Particle Density - High, Environment Detail High, Shadow Quality - Low) with addons running. This would be about a 50fps upgrade from my current setup. Is this just going to be a waste of money, and should I save up for something else? I really don't have a source of income at the moment, so I probably wouldn't be able to get anything better anytime soon.