New PC time been 3 years since i upgraded Options

[Peeka]

Whats good these days i dont have a huge budget would like to keep it under $1000
current spec is

Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor 3800+, ~2.4GHz
Memory: 2048MB DDR2
Hard Drive: 74 GB Raptor
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX

dunno whats good these days ie bang for buck

AMD or Intel
ATI or nvidia

do i need to upgrade gfx card or will current one be ok for now till i get extra cash later
also need a new case with psu as this one is fubar
dont need hdd's

was aiming at intel Dual Core and nvidia cause there pritty much idiot proof and cbf stuffing around but amd and ati have seem to come a long way so dont mind giving them a try again

[Spitefultongue]

chuck a new gfx card (HD4850) in and be done with it imo. I'm running a 2y.o. Dual core opteron and an 8800GTS 512mb and it's fine for all current games on a 19" monitor.

Hardware is way ahead of software at the moment, it's simply unnecessary to have expensive hardware unless you have a 30" monitor or just want a big ewang.

Hardware will never be ahead of software

Running a card like a 4850/9800+ on your 3800 X2 would be a huge waste. I did the same thing with an much older card 8800GTS (G80) and gained a significant performance boost when I upgraded to a Q6600.