^^ How about does not have the money to invest in a significant upgrade?
Being poor?
This stems back to the people who go.
Get a whole new PC and leave the thread knowing that the most likely reasoning for the small upgraded is due to being poor.
There has been no mention of the OP stating he would blame it all on us if his machine does not perform to what he hopes it to so why would you assume it would fall back on us?
simple don't upgrade at all
been there done that I ran with a GHz Pentium 4 until late 2008 I could have upgraded with more ram or a faster gpu but that would have been a waste of time and i knew it how ever temping it was to spend 80 bucks on a 7800GT or a faster ram I knew in the end it would never help much .. so saved .. and I waited ..
hypothetical situation
I have a AMD 5200+ with 2GB of DDR 667 paired with a ATI 4850..
the options to upgrade that are pretty good most am2 boards support a Phenom II's and I do have one pcie x16
most boards of that era are limited to a 95wat TDP for phenom II's
so the options to upgrade are
drop in a ATI 6770 +120.00
and change the cpu out to a AMD Althalon II x4 100.00
upgrade to 4GB DRR2 +60.00 now I have a pc that could play battle field 3 and acceptable framerates
cost 335.00 usd
for a little over 100 dollars more I could build a brand new pc that would outperform the upgraded one by several factors of magnitude
for example
antec 520wat psu +55.00
4GB DDR3 1600 + 40.00
Amd Pheome II X4 BE 130.00
socket AM3+ motherboard 75.00
ATI 6850 150.00
160GB hdd +70.00
Optical drive and misc parts +35
cheap case +25
450USD
this estimate is probably a bit on the high side
and it would ABSOLUTELY stomp the old rig
so say the I decide to upgrade my current build and save 115 bucks a well Iv breathed another year or so if life into it so what ... do I repeat the same process the following year ? and waste another 200 or 300 bucks ?