upgrade or new system?

[remeteer]

hi all i recently purchased Empire total war however it runs rubbish on my current system:

Mainboard : MSI K8N Neo4/SLI (MS-7100)
Chipset : nVidia nForce4
Processor : AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2000 MHz
Physical Memory : 2048 MB
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS
Hard Disk : Maxtor (123 GB)
DVD-Rom Drive : PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110D
Monitor Type : 16 inches
Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition 5.01.2600 Service Pack 3
DirectX : Version 9.0c (October 2008)

the minimum requirements are:
2.4Ghz single core processor
256MB Gfx card (DX9 compaitble)
1GB RAM (For XP, 2GB if using Vista)

As you can probably tell im not very wise with computers so any help would be appreciated. Would it be possible to upgrade my system or would i be better buying a new one? I have money to spend but dont really want to if i can help it.

Cheers

 

[remeteer]

what would i be able to get for around £500? maybe not something amazing but a good base to later upgrade

 

[remeteer]

thanks for the reply! would i have to put it together myself or does it come prebuilt. Also would it be easy to upgrade in say 6 months time?