Need some expert tips about upgrading!

[Wham!]

After seeing my 4890 perform worse and worse during 2010-2011 as is now required something new. A solid container with good air flow that can play BF3 on high settings (not max-max) and no performance drops.

Current setup:
-------------------------
• AMD X4 PII 940 BE@3.56GHz
• XFX HD4890 OC'd (Performs very well for being such an old card)
• GA-MA790X-UD3P
• 4GB of DDR2 RAM (Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500CS)
• 500GB HDD
• 650W Corsair PSU
• Windows 7 64-bit
• + a small chassis

I plan to get myself a XFX HD6970 shortly, with the reason for my current card is not enough. And a new chassis called Cooler Master Sniper: Black Edition.

What do you think I should upgrade? If you say that I shall upgrade my MB - upgrading RAM, HDD and eventually a CPU follows.

All opinions and ideas are welcome, thanks!

 

[NeXuS1]

Well if you wanna game I would reccomend switching out the CPU and mobo to 1155 and an i5 2500k. Your video card is decent, BF3 is gonna be CPU intensive, even BF BC 2 is cpu intensive.

 

[Wham!]

It's not the CPU that is holding me back, it's the video card. Maybe I'll go for a AMD Bulldozer in the future.

Do you think a 6970 will bottleneck anything in my current system?

 

[NeXuS1]

Im pretty sure your processor is going to bottle neck the 6970.

 

[BassAddict]

Im pretty sure your processor is going to bottle neck the 6970.

The 6970 will not be bottle-necked by his processor.

 

[Wham!]

Thanks for clarifying it BassAddict!

 

[Indigo]

I agree, there's plenty of pep in the 940 in this case, and as resolutions scale up, the GPU will take over most of the heavy lifting, so a CPU upgrade at this point is a little ways out yet. Good thought though.

The power supply looks to be fine for the 6970, so if that card appeals to you, Wham!, I'm with Bass, should be a nice upgrade.