System upgrade! Looking for advice

[ChromeWeasel]

My current system is getting flaky and I'm looking to upgrade. Runs windows fine but lock up in City of Heroes. Seems related to the memory but I've swapped it around without totally resolving the lockups.

I figure I need a new video card at least. On top of that it might be time for a new MB and CPU, and probably memory to boot. I was originally looking at a new Geforce 6600 but they are mostly PCI-E which makes getting a MB harder right now.

Current setup is:

CPU: Pentium 4 - 2.4
MB: MSI MS-6547
Mem: 1 GB PC2700 (only 512 in at a time due to application lockups)
Video: MSI Geforce4 Ti 4200
Sound: Creative SB Live Gamer 5.1 w/ Creative SW DT3500 digital

I want to replace whatever I have to relatively inexpensively. I don't need the highest end components. I just want to make a nice rig that can play some games and run for another couple of years (I hope) before I upgrade again.

Seems PCI express is the best choice for right now but I'm not married to it either. Whatever gets me bang for the buck. I'm looking at something like the ASUS p5gdc-V But it's $160. The MSI K8M NEO-V SC754 is half the price. Is there that big a jump in performance? I realize I have to get a AGP video card but I don't care a lot about upgradability.

Also, would any motherboards give me better sound with my DTT3500 than I get with my SB Live gamer? Seeing lots of built-in 5+ channel audio on new MBs. I don't know anything at all about on-board sound.

 

[blackinches]

blackinches thinks the a64 3500+ is a good sweetspot of speed and price. if you plan on going socket 754 blackinches has heard good things about the dfi lanparty. but blackinches would suggest going with an nforce3 ultra board socket 939 with future upgradability in mind. with that you can get an geforce 6800 agp card which is a lot easier to find than the pci-e versions. as for memory if you don't plan on overclocking you can get a 1gb mushkin dual pack rather cheaply at newegg.com. as for sound blackinches prefers sound cards over onboard sound becuase they use less cpu cycles, like a sb audigy 2. as for hard drives the diamondmax10 300gb w/ 16mb cache are around 200. just make sure to get the oem drive to get the 3 year warranty.