My system has been blue-screening a lot lately and I'm pretty sure it's because my ancient video card is overheating and shutting itself off while the system is on. My budget for a new card is around $150-190. I'll be using it alongside my XFX AMD 6450 1GB, which runs two Dell 2007FP's at 1600x1200. The new video card will be in charge of a 1920x1080 (main) and 1600x900 monitor. The games I will be playing are SWGEmu, SWTOR, Company of Heroes, BF3, and occasionally COD: BO. I also use it to play blu-rays.
I was thinking of an overclocked <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130841">GTX 650 Ti 2GB from EVGA</a>. Should I go with this or just switch completely over to AMD? Or maybe go for a previous generation but more powerful nVidia card?
This is very similar to my system in power. I was running a quad core q9550, rated on passmark as exactly identical power to you. I upgraded from a 9600GT 512MB. Now here is what I learnt when I replaced my GPU to a GTX 560. The CPU is reaching the end of its life. The CPU becomes a bottleneck on the GPU but it isnt a complete loss. Now for this upgrade, you will need to overclock, not much, Just enough to get over the Bottleneck. My CPU at stock is 2.83GHz, Now its running at 3.2 stable but thats nothing compared to its potential of 3.5+ however the real problem is the ram. I get just enough performance to run BF3 at max now 95% CPU usage
You are running 2 sticks of 1333MHz. As you increase the FSB, The clock on the ram increases aswell and unless you are able to change the multiplier on your ram so something lower, You may have some big issues in the future. I have 4 sticks of 2gb ram. 2 are rated for 1600MHz, 2 are rated for 1333MHz, I have them clocked at 1500MHz which is not recomended. I would recomend swapping out your 1333MHz sticks for 1600 or higher before you overclock. Just do some research before you go ahead and the 650ti is a reasonable GPU, It should do fine, May you could probly go is a 560 unless you swap out the ram for a higher overclock. Just make sure you do your research before you overclock or just save for a better computer if you want to run the best games at max settings.