Buget gameing system for friend

I don't have much time to game anymore so I'm out of the loop on what the best bang for the buck gaming setup might be right now. I have a friend playing Aion and needs to upgrade his old 3400+ skt 939 system. He has a Radeon X1800XT 256MB video card he was going to try and still use and upgrade later. His budget is around $300 and would need a motherboard, proc and ram. He does not care about the long term ability to upgrade the system.
The two options I was thinking of was a

1)Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R and a E8400
2)Asus M4A79XTD and Phenom II 720 or 545

Since I'm putting this together for someone else I was not really planing on overclocking but can if I need to. Still haven't looked into ram yet but will need at least 3 gigs.

How do the two systems compare? Is the video card good enough for the short term or would he be better off adding a new video card to the old system?

Haven't looked into this is quite some time so any other ideas or suggestions would be great. Thanks

Gigabyte 770T, x3 720 or x4 925 and 4 gig kit of g.skill ripjaw ddr3... would be good upgrade for your friend.

The Gigabyte 770T looks interesting. Would the main difference between it and a 790 based board be ability to overclock?

Also wanted to ask how a IP35-E with a E6600 would compare to the other options. I can buy them used pretty cheap. (around $110)

I am running a Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P motherboard and an AMD Athlon II 620 CPU. Both can be had on newegg for 178 dollars. Their is a combo deal on the Athlon II with RAM, so you can get the Athlon II x4 620, the motherboard, and 4 gigs of Gskill Ripjaws DDR3 1333 RAM for 245 dollars.

I have the Athlon II running at 3.4ghz up from 2.6 stock on a Xigmatek 1283 cooler. So I don't know how this motherboard compares to a comparable 790 platform in overclocking performance, but it does overclock.

I just read a review of the board and the only thing it really seems to be lacking is CrossFireX compaired to 790fx boards and it seemed to overclock almost as well.

I guess my question now would be would a Phenom II 545 on a Gigabyte 770T runs games about as well as a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R w/ E8400?
The Phenom would have the added benifit of being a lot cheaper and be an easier upgrade in the future?

@Sprfan

Gigabyte 770T is one of the top 5 overclocking AM3 boards.

Yes x2 545 would give you similar frames rates as e8400 in most games.

The AM3 socket is definetly more future proof than the LGA 775 socket, so although you said upgradeability wasn't a top concern its certainly worth taking a look at. The dual core Phenom isn't a bad choice, but have you considered an Athlon II 620 if your friend multitasks alot, or a tricore for a compromise?