So I've had this little machine now for 18 months or so and the poor little CPU is starting to be overwhelmed by new games a bit, its an e8400 I think.

As always I stop keeping track of what's best once I upgrade and with the ton of current CPUs out there I don't have a clue where to start, so please can someone give me an idea on what would be a good combo to look at getting in the near future.

No real issue on price, but uber stupid prices can be ignored!

Cheers

Sandy bridge is the future.

Excellent performance and overclock possibilities to satisfy all your needs.

I got an i7 930 2.8 ghz CPU, it's great but costly, i'd go for it if money is no object.

Moby although i have an Asus P6X58D-E i'd go for the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (i believe it's name is), it's roughly the same cost but has more features. It's not a top end board but it is very good almost deceiving.

i got that combo (Asus board) in my rig and it's sailing through anything i throw at it with ease.

I have the AMD Phenom II Black Edition @3.2Ghz for me, it works a charm, at about £100, great if you don't have enough for an Intel, and I seem to prefer AMD now.

4GB RAM
GTX 460 1GB

Works a dream, pretty cheap, £550 with the other components (I forget) But its great if your going for a low cost build, I can max out TF2 @ 1080 with 200+ FPS and for the new DX11 games, like Shogun 2 and Crysis 2 I get about 50 -/+ FPS on ultra.

I would echo the Sandy Bridge route.

Hmm, after looking at them, I think so too

the i7 2600k gets approx 50% higher score on the passmark CPU benchmarks than the i7 950 of the previous generation for roughly the same price, and the sandy bridge mobo's are also generally cheaper. No Brainer IMO.

EDIT: 930 is going to be unlikely find as most retailers seem to have stopped selling them.