A new cpu and a gpu walk into the tailor shop...

So is there any general consensus on how well a phenom II x4 955 coupled with a radeon 5770 would handle this game now? I'm probably gonna just dropkick the old computer I've been using and thought this would be a good enough economical (no i7 for now at least) choice to last awhile and play this game. The mobo (probably an 890), RAM, PSU, all that I will work out later. For now, I'm curious if this is a better than acceptable combo to build a new system around.

It will work fine/great for the game.

I'd been looking at a Phenom II X4 955 myself, coupled with a Radeon 5850, but consider a Radon 5770 to be a good second choice for video to save a bit of money. Either should be able to play CoX with most if not all of the Ultra Mode bells and whistles on high settings. Personally, I'm holding out for the 5850 to give my new system a bit more headroom for other games. Even with Ultra Mode, CoX's graphics are hardly cutting-edge.

What sort of hardware is on your OLD system? My current PC is an ancient Athlon XP 2600+ with a GeForce 7600GT videocard, so my planned replacement ought to be a serious kick in the pants, performance-wise.

As for a motherboard, any with the 890 chipset would do you good, but personally, to save a little money, I'm going with this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128438

It actually uses the 790 northbridge, not the 890, the difference being the number of full-speed PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots supported (one vs. two). But I'm unlikely to ever run two cards in Crossfire, so a single x16 is enough for me. More importantly, that m/b has the 850 southbridge, which gives more SATA 6Gb/s ports than the older 750 (more future-proof). And it's $40 cheaper than a full 890/850-based board.

Well, my Phenom II X6 1055T is running it great with my Nvidia 8800GT. I was going to get the 955 but Fry's had an awesome sale on a Biostar Mobo/1055 combo. With 4 gigs DDR3 and their 2 year instant replacement policy (a great buy by the way. Only $35 and they will swap any failed part in store no questions asked) it came in at under $430 with tax.

Next step is upgrading the 8800gt. It is over two years old after all. But I can only throw so much money away at a time.

Incidentally for those who wonder. The Phenom 1055T is actually slightly better than the i7 and considerably less expensive. I believe I read somewhere that SLI won't work with it but I could be wrong. And since I have no intention of using SLI I don't care.

the current desktop at home is old... your athlon makes me laugh at the inherent newness compared to mine... a Pentium 4 2.4... sporting a Radeon 9500 Pro. The game has become too much for the GPU to handle at this point.

I would love to get a 5850 but I believe I will stick with the 5770 unless a find an hellacious deal for the 5850. My monitor at home is only a 20-inch at 1600x900, hence the leaning toward a 5770 as being more than enough.

Mobo-wise I was thinking either the 890GX or 890FX. I have no desire for an IGP but keeping cost down, even a few bucks, is always nice around my household. I've never rolled with an AMD chip before so there is a certain allure to giving one a whirl after a lifetime of intel chips (sans the time of the almighty c64. I still miss it.). Now if only I can find win7 on a good deal somewhere...