I'm feeling lazy, so I didn't read the whole thread. I looked over your initial secs. You have a core I7. That is a pretty good CPU, do you know if it is a quad core or dual core processor (without digging, I'm going to guess quad core). Either way, I don't think that piece needs to be upgraded.
8 gigs of ram is plenty in my opinion. I run 6, and at max settings the game is smooth. I would recommend upgrading your graphics card though. It is a little bit on the old end. Though newer than my current card (Raedeon 450 hd) I think. You could get a newer card for 200-250 or less...depending on what you want. I would not say anything less than Nvidia 5xx series of card.
I would get 570, 580, or 590. Those would be the highest I would go for the price. If you want a cheaper card I would get a 4xx series Nvidia card, 470, 480, or 490. I bet you could fine one of those for around 100-200$.
If you want an ATI card you could get one of the newer 6xxx series cards, though I haven't been following these too much so I don't know which I would suggest. Nvidia and ATI tend to do this thing where one is better than the other at any given time. But they are all pretty equal any way, so its all about how much you want to spend, how fast of a card you want and which company you prefer.
I just ordered an VGA MSI|N570GTX TWIN FROZR II 1280M this week, the twin frozr II is a fan system developed by MsI (I guess) instead of using the stock single fan, they have a custom built Twin Frozr system (this one is Twin Frozr II, there is a version III available if you want the newer model.) Basically its two fans, to increase the air flow ultimately keeping the card much cooler than the stock fan.
If you need more expert details on any given card, go to youtube and watch LinusTechTips videos for benchmarks, unboxings and all the information you will ever wan. He is very good at breaking it down in laymen terms too. (one of my favorite computer hardware reviewers out there).
Good luck on your upgrades.
Forgot to mention power supply. If you need to upgrade your PSU (power supply unit) you might want to consider the Corsair GS600 or better. If you don't have (I believe 450+) depending on the card specs you might not have enough power to run everything. The PSU I use is the Corsair GS600, its a 600 watt PSU, and is SLI certified so it will support cards in SLI mode, or one card with 2 6 pin ports. (this is important that you have the correct PSU to have enough power to go to the card, I ran into a problem last year where I thought I had a psu that was good enough so I didn't upgrade and it started giving problems to the board. 2 RMA's later and a new case and everything is solid again.
» Edited on: 2012-08-01 16:19:30