Should a friend of mine switch from a Pentium G630 to an AMD setup?

A friend of mine has a Pentium G630 on a basic mATX board and a GeForce 9800GT. He can either buy a Radeon 5830 and stay with his CPU/board, or he can get a new Trinity quad core with a built in 7-series GPU and a new board. If he chooses to switch to AMD, he can get $80 cash for his G630 and motherboard and then sell also the 9800GT.

I'm not saying that the graphics work so that 5830 = 9800GT = 7660D. What I mean is that a $50 FM2 board and a $130 CPU come out to be $100 after he sells his Intel parts for $80, and he can sell the 9800GT to recoup some more of the cost. Otherwise, he'd just spend a little bit of money, probably under $50, getting a 5830 and staying with his G630.

Which would be the best way to go?

Thanks!

The power supply is a Tagan 480W. His PC plays all the games it can manage. He has L.A. Noire, Skyrim, Saints Row, lots of Valve games, and so on. It's just grab bag gaming from Steam sales. What he has works for him, but I figured an upgrade would be nice. Hence, this thread. Thanks for the help!

Thanks! It is a lot of work, but one advantage is that we get to sell someone who needs a PC a motherboard/CPU setup for $80. I guess if the friend with the hardware right now isn't feeling charitable, he might have to upgrade with what he has. The CPU can definitely be upgraded because the board is a retail MSI H61M-P31. We've been chatting about it, and though he'd be a mid-grade 6-series Radeon away from hybrid Crossfire with the new setup, it's all muddled and sidegrade-y. Well, thanks again for clearing it up.

This is basically what I've been thinking, but he has a sub-$100 budget. By selling his setup and getting a whole new one, he's out a video card as well (he'd keep the 9800). He only has less than $100 for a new card, and a friend already has a 5830 for sale. It sort of works.

Only the 6670 & 6570 can be used for Crossfire with the APU. That would be a separate $50 purchase, but it would be pretty cool & low on power consumption.

The ability to pay $180 comes from getting $80 for selling his CPU and board though. But yeah, any GPU for ~$100 still makes sense.

Seems reasonable. This and the stuff written up to it, but I didn't want to quote everything. Since the guy's PC is used as a fun gaming rig, it plays just whatever is fun to play regardless of the system requirements. If he is below the requirements and needs to play a game, he either skips as need is relative or he upgrades just a wee bit. All the possible options are wee upgrades, but there's nothing he can't play now. It's excess. He's living the American dream.

Tagan might not be the stuff today, but it's a nice PSU nonetheless. I think it falls in efficiency and maybe voltage regulation - I'm not entirely sure except it was used by Tom's for testing until they outright dropped it - but since he's not overclocking on the 1155 socket, it's not too rough. This Tagan was temporarily used to run a 3.7GHz Phenom II X4 830, 4GB DDR3, and a 6950 for a couple days before another friend upgraded to a Silverstone 750W. I digress. I suppose if power efficiency isn't being pursued here, reasonably this budget gaming friend of mine probably could pull off running games on either rig. It should probably come down to immediate cost as compared with FPS and such. He doesn't pay for electricity.