Need suggestions on upgrade
 

Heya guys, looks like this sort of topic is pretty common so my apologies for adding yet another, but digging through a couple of the others didn't seem much help. So I'm looking to upgrade my PC, don't need anything too crazy, but would like to run more current games a bit better. I can run just about anything fine, but it would be nice to use all those fancy effects more and up the resolution, y'know? I -assume- my graphics card is what's currently holding me back, but not too sure.

Mobo: ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe
Proc: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+
RAM: 4GB Corsair something or other, don't remember the exacts
Video: Radeon X1600 pro

So assuming it is my card, what do you think would work well within the $200-$300'ish price range? (Though of course, if there's something cheaper that works great, I'm all for it) Also, should I go with NVidia or stick with ATI? And should I look into doing the whole Crossfire thing since my Mobo has two PCIe?

Hoping it is the card and not my mobo/processor, those things are a pain to replace. Either way, any advice is appreciated, thanks.

go for the new GeForce...

GeForce 8800GT or GeForce GTX 260 - 896MB

with those thing you'll andle anything...

Chances are, you won't be playing anything that'll require crossfire, and even then, you'll notice almost no difference unless you're playing in really high resolution. Speaking of, what resolution are you gaming in? What current games are you playing (don't see any very demanding "current" games ATM)? That said and assuming you're not using a monitor greater than 22", I'd probably get an 8800GT for the best bang for your buck, or if you want an ATI (aka. cheaper in price) solution, go with the HD4850 or HD4870.

I would second the HD 4850, it's a great card and I happen to run it myself and I have no complaints. Not to mention if you buy it from new egg they give you a free pc game thrown in. 4gb of ram is pretty good too, most systems wont even recognize it, but if you want a deal, go for 2g or 4g of G skill RAM also, that's very fast stuff and it's interleaved. Wouldn't cost you more than 70-80 bucks.

I hear ati cards run insanely hot. But it can't be worse than me having to use 3rd party drivers (Xtreme-g) because nvidia can't code and doesn't care to fix a very old antialiasing bug.

Also intel > amd.

Whoah, didn't even notice the replies here, sorry for responding late. I did a bit more research, and I did end up going with the HD 4850. Sure enough, it was my card holding me back, I went from running Bioshock on 1024x768 with medium'ish settings with some lag to max settings 1600x1200 smoothly. I could give Crysis or something a shot to really see how my system holds up now, but so far I'm more than satisfied with its performance.

As for ATI cards running hot, this thing sure does. It stays at a steady 75-80'ish C, but even after a long run it doesn't seem to heat up much more, and it's yet to have any problems. I dunno how it'd handle overclocking, but I don't have a need to really push it yet, and hopefully won't. I've just been taking a little more care and not leaving my system running for extended periods in case.

Thanks for the help guys.

My 8800GT run crysis on max (exept lame shader) 1600x1200, idle temp is around 62 depending on room temp (62c being around 77F room temp), and around 80-82 at load from a modern game.

So... I guess the ati rumor is true. I honestly think that heat will shorten card life.

Well, correction on that. Obviously the stock fan settings are worthless, so after reading up a bit on how to adjust it I did. Set the fan to a steady 40%, and the temp dropped from 75 to 50 within minutes. A little odd having to go into text to adjust it, but was plenty easy with a nice YouTube tutorial.