Video Card and RAM Upgrades

[Concillian]

On the video cards I would lean toward the  nVidia GeForce 6800 GT.  Another card mentioned was the Ati Radeon X800 XT.  I noticed the 6800 supports 4x/8x AGP while the X800 is 8x AGP only.  Where do I find out which one my computer has?  Or am I looking at something that doesn't matter?
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Anything that supports AGP 8x will work in a 4x slot. The older slots used different voltage so the same is not necessarily true of lower AGP specifications, but 4x 8x is.

Personally, I would get a decent video card, and save the rest of your money. 512MB is not optimum, but is adequate. RDRAM is like twice as much as DDR RAM for no perceptible performance difference.

If you're willing to sell your existing 512 MB, you may be able to replace everything and start fresh.

For example you can go to mwave.com and get a bundle of:
Athlon 3000+ 939
1 GB ram
Epox 9NDAJ3 motherboard (NForce3 chipset)

That is $350 + shipping

Sell your ram through online forums like the FS/FT forum at anandtech.com (which I have used with great success) for even a lowball price off like $80 and you have a fair amount leftover for a decent video card. Sure you aren't talking x800XT at that point, but something in the $150-200 range is perfectly adequate for most gaming. I initially used a Radeon 9700 that I got for $100 on eBay for WoW and online First Person Shooters, and it was great for 1280x1024 in WoW and 1024x768 in most First Person Shooters at very good FPS.

There is some very good value in the used midrange AGP market right now as people jump to PCI-e for no reason. 9700, 9700 Pro, 9800 Pro, 5900/5900xt are all priced very well in the used market. And all are decent. Though having owned both the 5900xt and 9700 I have to say ATI was clearly ahead that generation despite more current midrange cards favoring nVidia.

The other option is to get a good $2-400 video card and use it with your existing MB/RAM and just save up for a platform upgrade.

But I really have to questions spending money on RDRAM right now. The value just isn't there when you can get a gig of DDR for the price of 512MB of RDRAM.

The video card market is extremely confusing, let me summarize things on the AGP front here from approximate lowest performance to highest:
#1 is assume that any version of SE or LE or whatever not mentioned here is not a good value at all with gaming in mind.
(A = ATi/Radeon N = nVidia/GeForce)
A 9200/9250
N 5200 128 bit
N 5600/5700
N 5600 Ultra
A 9600
N 5700 Ultra
A 9600 Pro
A 9600XT
---------------
N 5900XT
A 9700 / A 9800 128 bit
N 5900
A 9700 Pro / A 9800 256 bit
N 5900 Ultra
A 9800 Pro
N 6600GT / 6800
-----------------
A x800 Pro
---
N 6800GT
N 6800 ultra / A x800XT

The breakpoints are what I would consider fairly significant jumps Where there is a clear performance advantage, generally allowing a significant resolution change or other features. The x800 is kind of alone, in that it isn't quite as good as the 6800GT, but it's definitely better than the 6600GT/6800 cards. It's priced too high for it's performance if you buy it new. I got mine used and at less than 75% of what they could generally be bought for new.

I use an x800 Pro now, and it plays WoW with most sliders at high and resolution of 1600x1200, quite a move up from the 9700 which was 1280x1024 with most sliders in the middle. For FPS type games, the x800 isn't enough to play at the kind of settings I use for WoW, but 1600x1200 can be made playable, or it can be set at pretty high settings for 1280x1024.

Hopefully that gives you a better idea of the video card market. My thought on the best value is a used 9700, 9700 Pro, or 9800 in the $100-130 range, as you get good performance and decent resolution for far less than what can be bought new. As you move up in the performance range, the value decreases, mostly because video cards are THE limiting factor in high end First Person Shooter games. In reality, there is little reason for the top tier cards if you aren't playing FPS games.