£250 to spend with current specs: XFX Radeon 6870 1gb GPU 8150 Bulldoxer 3.6ghz 8 core CPU. Kingston 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz x2 RAM. Asus M5A78L/USB3 Motherboard. Win 7 64 bit. Looking for upgrade suggestions. Not my specs I might add.
Motherboard is a low end 4 phase design which isn't ideal with FX cpu's That said if the system is stock it will prob be fine (would imagine it will throttle when those bare vrm's get too hot). The GPU is getting on now, if that were my system id prob pick up a 7950, maybe then look at a ssd with the remainder.
I believe he is looking to do a bit more gaming on it so I would suggest he would need to upgrade GPU and then SSD.
ssd and a mosfet heatsink IMO - I added an enzotech MST-81 to my board and holy **** it gets warm (gigabyte ga770ta-ud3, with 8+2)
For gaming a new GPU. Any mid-high end card will beat your current one. For all round usage, a new SSD. Install your OS on it and it will reduce the time to do everything.
Framerates need GPUs, so that's the answer. Probably pick up a second hand 680 or a 7970 GHz for that sort of money, but if not then a 670 or 7950 new.
The CPU is fine, it'll more than come into its own once the new consoles hit. I would be adding a nice high end GPU
