What are my best options for upgrading

[Zlejedi]

darklich13 said:

Also, you said the loading was slow,

You could get a WD Raptor, or get two of them and RAID 0. That will cut your loading time.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drives-_-Western+Digital-_-22136296

Nope it won't.

I installed ETW on SSD drive (Patriot Warp v2) and there were no noticable gains (i was checking with stop watch).

As for op question:

get

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185093

or other good cooler and overclock your cpu at least to 2.8Ghz and upgrade GPU to radeon 5850 as suggested before.

 

For <300$ you will have very decent machine.