If it's the first gen i3, it was pretty ok-almost great for it's day. Just because something is old doesn't mean it's lousy, look at the Core 2 Quad's. They're still great CPU's. If it's the 1.86GHz Celeron on the other hand, that it's a wonder how it ran anything at all.
You're contradicting yourself a lot here. I'm just saying. Your system is old, don't blame the software you're trying to run on it. Lower your settings if things get slow, graphical settings mean just as much to the CPU as they do to the GPU, because the commands run through the CPU first. If the GPU processes faster than the CPU can send it instructions, it will cause lot FPS and frame drops, just like if the GPU processes slower than the CPU can send it data, or if both CPU and GPU are terrible. "Taught me everything he knows."
Compared to your father's "20 years of experience," no. Compared to how quickly computer hardware improves, yes, it is old. what?
You are at the time for an upgrade. But you should go for a different socket, there isn't much of interest available on 1156, as they're mostly Kentsfield chips if I recall. 1366 may be required if you're on the cheap. You get Triple-Channel RAM and Core i7 Bloomfield chips there. The Core i7-920 is a very good chip for it's age and price. I have personal experience with them. I wouldn't take it over my i5, but my i5 is only a year old. If you want newer, you can spring for LGA 1155, and Sandy-Bridge CPUs. The Core i5-2500K is still the beast it used to be. They overclock to the moon while gaining wonderful performance increases while doing it.
That's a QX9770. Top of the line at its time. Sells for £200. For $120 (the price of the i3) you get a QX9650 which is even slower. You can get an H110 board for $50-60, not expensive at all. Buying outdated hardware is never a good idea. Even on a budget.
Ah, well in that case it would be idiotic to go for the QX9770. I honestly didn't know what they go for, I was thinking more Q6600, if I'm honest.
