Upgrade advice sought.

[Angilion]

Here are the relevant parts of my current kit, i.e. the bits I'm considering changing.

Asrock 939 DualSATA2
A64 3000 Venice at 2.25GHz
2x512MB Crucial PC3200 CAS3 (running happily at 1T)
Audigy2

It appears that my board is limited to 250MHz on the sort-of-FSB, hence the 2.25GHz on my CPU with a 9x multiplier.

What I'm looking for is some upgrades to see me through a couple of years. I'm poor, so money is a big factor. I do some work on it, but any old office PC would do for that. The main issue is gaming.

I'm thinking along a few lines:

A64 X2 3800 only.

A64 X2 3800 and an X-Fi.

A64 X2 3800 and an X-Fi and another 2x512MB of Crucial PC3200 (to avoid possible "mix 'n' match" trouble).

Core 2 6300 + motherboard + memory, in which case I could only afford 2x512MB and no X-Fi. I'd also need a new CPU cooler, wouldn't I? I'm fairly sure I read that new coolers are needed with Core 2.

So...suggestions welcomed.

 

[semi-pro waster]

I'd probably suggest the X2 3800 and extra gb of Ram as making the most difference in performance terms, of course you are probably better selling off your existing gb and getting 2x1gb matched pairs so you can continue to run at 1T.