Would it be worth it to swap my DFI motherboard

[Firsttime]

I have a DFI Lanparty NF3 250gb UT mother board in my computer. I like the board except it dosn't have a PCI-e port and my 9600pro isn't really cutting it anymore. If I know I could trade my DFI board for an ESC 754 board with PCI-e would that be smart? I work at a camp over the summer so it will not be used at all for the summer after I get out of school in a month. After the summer I want to upgrade my GPU and I was thinking about getting a higher end used AGP card. But after looking at benchmarks it doesn't seem the high end AGP cards can even shake a stick at a mid-range PCI-e card. I only really play RTS games but after this I don't plan on upgradeing anything untill I get out of college (except for maybe adding another 512 MB of RAM). The reasons I am holding back is because it's an ESC and I would loose a good part of my OC. I have a Sempron 2600+@2.2ghz right now and if I swapped them out I would have to back down to at least 2ghz if the board can get that far. I game at 1280x768.

System Specs.
Sempron 2600+@2.2ghz
512 MB of Kingston HyperX PC3500
BBA 9600 pro

 

[dBTelos]

When you upgrade, get a socket939 board w/ PCI-E. Athlon 64 x2 3800+ and 7600GS or 7900GT. Add another stick of 512MB (same thing) and put it in duel channel.

 

[Firsttime]

Yeah I would love to, but I need to keep it under $300 Can. and living in Canada is the other problem. Parts are way more here.

 

[pkrush]

I think that you could probably get by with a Biostar Tforce6100-754 motherboard (best 754 board out right now, actually overclocks better than the DFI nForce3), another 512 megs of RAM, and a Geforce 7600gt. It may be bottlenecked somewhat by your processor, but you'll have about 4x the graphics power available. I'd also look into getting a decent heatsink so you can squeeze a better overclock out of the Sempron (I've seen them hit up to about 2.6 Ghz on air). If you can't afford this much (not sure how much parts cost over there), the RAM is probably the best upgrade you can get. Windows really feels a lot smoother with more RAM. You can also look on the FS/FT forums here, you can probably pick up a 9800 Pro for cheap.

 

[Firsttime]

That's a nice motherboard, it would be a little hard to get ahold of, (neither of our half decent online stores have it) but maybe some on the FS/FT will. My CPU will be a bottleneck due to its really same cache size, but it looks like there are new Venice 754s coming out maybe at the end of the summer one of those will be a viable option, or some of the Clawhammers/Winchesters are coming down in price. I am not super keen on going 939 as it seems it will soon be passed by Intel and AMD and I can't really see a huge preformance increase. Dual core would be almost pointless for me as the most intencive my multi-tasking gets is music and a game at the same time. So maybe the Biostar motherboard, 512 MB more RAM and a 7600gt and then save for a new CPU would be my best option.

Edit: I did have my 2600+ at 2.4 but heat was becomeing an issue so I backed it down a little, my room can get quite warm because our wood stove is next door.