Upgrade whole system or specific components?

[MacAttack]

Life has been hectic since my last build. Other than general usage, I have not had time to game much. I will be doing some gaming now and trying to determine what I need to do. My system did OC great when I started it, but never needed it so I backed it down to stock for most of its life. As a start, I threw in Skyrim with some of the 2K textures and the system simply cannot keep up. So, I figure if I am going to do some gaming I need to make upgrades.

Build:
ASRock P55 Deluxe Motherboard
Intel i7-860 2.8GHz Lynnfield quadcore
2x2GB GSkill Ripjaws DDR3 2000
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 (reference that OC'd like a beast)
SSD (can't remember which one. Hard boot takes 10s to get active in Windows 7 Ultimate)

The build is almost 5 years old. I am too busy at the moment to diagnose where a bottleneck may be. What would you upgrade out of this or what do you think is the bottleneck?

 

[MacAttack]

I should also note that I have a 512GB Sata III SSD drive to add to the system (benefit from work). In order to achieve the benefits I would have to add a PCI card that supports 6Gb/s or new motherboard.

 

[Cerb]

I should also note that I have a 512GB Sata III SSD drive to add to the system (benefit from work). In order to achieve the benefits I would have to add a PCI card that supports 6Gb/s or new motherboard.

Incorrect. Only to get over ~275MBps.

Skyrim can take a faster CPU, but those textures have definitely outgrown your VRAM. A 1GB card like that can't take more than 1k for most textures, 2k for actors and their items (I have a GTX 460, for the moment, which is similar).

 

[Termie]

I'd start with a new video card before doing anything else and then see if you're happy with the performance.

Skyrim really isn't that demanding, other than in the VRAM area. While an R9 280X would be ideal, they are totally overpriced right now. I'd consider a GTX 760 4GB. Plenty of VRAM for Skyrim, and about twice the GPU power of your 5850.

 

[BurnItDwn]

New Video card for sure.

If still not 100% satisfied, upgrade to 8GB of ram, I would just pull the old ram and install a pair of 4GB chips.

CPU/Mobo is plenty fast

 

[MacAttack]

Thank you for the advice. I do not have any new games. Skyrim is the last game I purchased. I plan to try Titan Fall and maybe some other games as they come out.

I have 2x4GB GSkill Snipers coming. I just went to TigerDirect to look at cards. Not much in stock, but flip flopped back and forth. Decided to go with a EVGA GTX 760 SuperClock. The next "best" options were $100+.