Yet Another Upgrade Question....!

[Arcanedeath]

I'm thinking about upgrading my rig but I'm not really sure what I should upgrade and if it's worth it, or if I should just wait for Nforce 4 SLI to come out. I primarily use my rig for Gaming (mostly MMORPGs), Web Surfing, Email, and DVD / Mpeg4 Encoding in that order.

My current rig is as follows....

Antec 1040BII case w/ 400watt PSU (a SL400, sadly only 19A on the 12V rail)
Athlon XP 2500+ @ 3200+ speeds (2.2ghz) w/ SLK900A and 50CFM 92mm fan
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2.0
2x 512mb Buffalo Winbond CH5 based memory for 1GB total
1x WD2500JB (backup drive in a removable frame)
2x WD1200JB (one is in a remoable frame most of the time)
1x ATI Raedon 9800Pro w/ VGA Silencer @ aprox XT speeds
Using Soundstorm for the Audio connected to my HT reciver, but I have an Audigy 1 avi.
1x Asus 16x black DVD rom drive (rebaged Pioneer 121)
1x Lite-on 52x32x52x CDRW
1x Compaq P110 21" CRT monitor (FD trinitron tube does 1600x1200 @ 85hz and has dual inputs)
1x Hitachi SuperScan Elite 751 19" CRT (also displays up to 1600x1200 but only at 60hz)

I've noticed that I'm getting slow downs in some games w/ large numbers of players or NPC / Monsters in view so I was considering just upgrading my video card, but I prolly wouldn't be able to carry it to my next system if it did that so if anyone has some good ideas on what I should get let me know budget is aprox $500 US for upgrades of any type.

 

[gobucks]

With what you have now, you're not gonna see much of a performance boost on current 939 systems. nForce 4 will likely be the point I'd look into upgrading. In fact, I'm upgrading to an nForce4, and I'm still running an Athlon 700MHz (Slot A) and radeon 7500. Anyways, the nForce4 Ultra should be out in like 3-4 weeks, and the SLI may or may not pop up at the same time. It's going to add a whole slew of new interfaces, such as SATA-II, PCI-express, and will have lots of other goodies. If you upgrade to a new AGP card now, you won't be able to move it into a future system, which limits its viablility. These things will give you all kinds of upgrade potential, and will even support dual core CPUs.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I'm kinda leaning towards waiting for Nforce 4 SLI (@ sub $160) to come out but I have upgrade envy my little brother put together an A64 S754 system awhile back and it just leaves my system in the dust, sometimes getting twice the framerates and no slowdowns in many area's that cause my PC to chug, I'm not sure if it's Video or system Memory at this point though, MMORPGs are memory hogs and I'm not sure 1GB is enough, I've seen my peak commit exced that while running Everquest and various stuff in the backround for example but it could just be my 9800 not keeping up anymore. Welp more suggestions are welcome