PC upgrade neophyte questions

[Bacillus98]

Hello. I am in the market here to upgrade my current system to a decent gaming rig. I haven't been following the latest news so I admit I am out of the loop. I prefer a steady high minimum frame rate and at least medium eye candy settings. A budget build is what I am looking for since I am still mad at myself for spending close to 600.00 dollars on my HD Radeon 4870x2 card back in 2008. I plan to use my case, PSU, monitor, and keyboard/mouse so I only need a cpu/mobo/RAM with the possibility of a new graphics card.
My current specs:

Core 2 Duo E8500
GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS4
Radeon HD 4870 X2
G.SKILL 4GB SDRAM DDR2 1066
CORSAIR 1000W PSU
Asus VH236 LCD Monitor
Windows 7 64 bit

Here are a few of the options after some preliminary research:
Motherboards:
ASRock Z68 PRO3-M (110.00)
ASRock Z68 EXTREME4 GEN3 (185.00)
ASUS SABERTOOTH P67 REV 3.0 (200.00)

CPU's
Intel Core i5-2500K (225.00)
Intel Core i5-2400 (190.00)

RAM
Crucial 8 GB DDR3 1600 (35.00)

Would my Radeon 4870x2 card be fine with the new i5 processor in regards to newer games such as BF3, MW3, Shogun TW2 and UT3? I run games at 1920x1080 resolution. I hope one does not need something like the Radeon HD 7950 to accomplish this task. In summary I'd like to:

1.) Run modern games at a 1920x1080 resolution with med-high settings with decent minimum frame rates (45-50fps)
2.) Spend the least money as possible without sacrificing performance (ex: i5 2400 vs. i5 2500k)

Any advice/help on this upgrade process would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[bullbearish]

I ran BF3 on xfired 4850s at 1920x1080 in my last system without any problems, but it would only run on high and not on ultra. I can't speak to the other games.

Personally, I'd recommend the 2500k because of its overclocking capability. It'll help in the larger maps on BF3, and it's pretty easy to squeeze a lot of extra performance out of the chip.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I would recommend going with the 2400 if you dont plan on overclocking, if you do, then 2500k it it

for motherboard, go with the h67 chipset if your not ocing, dont get p67, its dumb, and get the z68 if you plan on overclocking the cpu

 

[Ken g6]

If you're really on a budget and don't want to overclock, I think you could go as low as an i3-2120 ($128@NewEgg) or even i3-2100 ($125 at NewEgg, but $100 at Micro Center) with no problems. If you plan on upgrading to an i5-3570K and overclocking then, getting a z68 board would be worthwhile.

 

[mfenn]

The RAM you have picked out is good. Both CPU's you have listed are also good, it really just comes down to whether or not you want to overclock. If you do want to OC, you need the K version and an aftermarket HSF like the Hyper 212 EVO.

As for the mobo, all of those except for the Pro3-M are overkill. Since you seem to have an ATX case, I would suggest the ATX Z68 Pro3.

If you want good minimum frame rates, a dual-GPU card with low VRAM definitely needs to be tossed out. BF3 can take as much GPU power as you're willing to throw at it, but reasonably-priced cards are the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 560 Ti 448. The 6950 2GB is a good choice too, but those seem to be OOS at the moment, probably due to the impending launch of the 7800 series.