morrisbj -
In the future, I suggest that when you are having a problem: (1) you post as much information and as detailed information about the problem and your attempts to solve it as possible. For example, it would have been very helpful (for those trying to assist you) to have had the information included in your LAST post included in your FIRST post; (2) you post your problem in the most applicable forum possible - for example your questions might have been better directed to the "Software - Apps, Programming and Games" forum since another gamer having the same motherboard as yours might have experienced, and conquered, the same problem as you are having; (3) you exercise a bit more patience while waiting for assistence from others on AnandTech. For example the upgrade suggestions made by "quackerww" would have enabled you to possibly solve your problem (more on that below) while simultaneously eliminating most of the expense of a future system. Quackerww's recommendation would have taken you to a 64-bit platform having the option of using either an AGP or PCI-Express video card. Here is a review of the chipset that is used on the motherboard quackerww recommended:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2471&p=6
That chipset, which I frankly was unaware of until reading quackerww's post and doing some investigating, should not be ignored - in fact since you are spending money, you might want to alter your order (if you do, check the PC3200 memory for compatibility with the ASROCK board in the process). In case you don't already know this, ASROCK is reputed to be afilliated with ASUS and ASUS motherboards have been traditionally known for their quality - I've used 20+ of their boards with only one disappointment. A friend of mine has an XP2400+ running on an ASROCK board (SIS chipset, but apparently a good one) and he seems to be very satisfied with it. That is the extent of my "semi-direct" experience with ASROCK.
My own approach to your problem, from the start, has been to focus on trying to help to solve the problem without spending any money whatsoever since you are on a limited budget. So here's my final attempt.....
Knowing what I know now it seems to me that this is an I/O related problem. I'm assuming (1) that when you re-built your OS you loaded the VIA 4-in-one drivers (2) that you aren't running some ancient 4400RPM hard drive with a 256MB memory buffer (3) that whatever partion you loaded the game has adequate free space (4) you aren't running an OLD low-speed DVD and (5) the memory management system, including virtual memory, or something else in your OS is not fouled up.
VIA, the maker of the KT400 chipset on your motherboard is fairly well known for producing comparatively inferior southbridges - at least that is my impression (and in fact the one disappointing ASUS board I've directly experienced had a VIA chipset - I didn't buy the blooming thing, someone gave it to me). Generally it is the southbridge chip that handles I/O (input/output, including reads/writes to IDE devices such as hard drives and optical drives such as CDs and DVDs [hope I'm not insulting you]), and it is here that VIA has a generally less than stellar rap. So it might make sense for you to download a recent copy SIS Sandra (it is free) and run the "drives benchmark" on your hard drive. If the score produced by your system is inferior then maybe we've narrowed the problem to the IDE (or SATA) subsystem - perhaps a BIOS or a driver issue.
If the hard drive produces a reasonable score, then it makes sense to take a hard look at your DVD drive. Is it in the master position (at the very end of an IDE cable), and jumpered as master? If it is running as a slave to another device then by all means set it up as the master device on the cable it is on and test your gaming performance with that configuration. Wouldn't hurt to set it up as the ONLY device (of course as master) on a given cable and see what happens. If that produces a pleasant surprise, then if you need to run another optical device on that cable then set that other device as slave and see what happens.
One other item - your processor. You stated "MOBO won't even accept bus set at 167." To the best of my memory, when the Athlon XP processor hit the 2700+ rating, the bus speed jumped from 133 to 166MHz. Thus, without overclocking, you should be able to run your system using a 166MHz main/front-side bus speed and a 333MHz (DDR) memory speed. If you aren't able to obtain these setting on your own, then I suggest you have your "geekiest" friend review your BIOS settings - maybe you have missed something. But if your processor isn't an XP2700+, then all bets are off.
With regard to a video card upgrade for $150, the 6600GT might be a good one (Leadtek MAY be the brand to buy) - either that or an equivalent from ATI. I must qualify my recommendation by stating that I haven't kept fully up to date on computer hardware, including graphics cards.
Good luck.
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