What should I do to upgrade my computer?

[Canadianmonster]

I bought a really good computer this summer, and now want to increase its power, this coming summer, but I don't know what I should do to improve its power. I'm hoping to spend about $1000 to $1500 US doing upgrades, and don't want to waste any of it on parts that are not needed. Also to save cost, I plan to buy my parts off ebay, and would be happy to hear anyone’s opinion about that plan as well.

Here is my system as it stands right now;

Mother Board: ASUS P4C800-Deluxe 800MHz PSB
CPU: Pentium 4 3.06 Ghz 800 Mhz FSB & 512K
RAM: Two 512MB PC-3200 DDR 400 MHz
HD: Western Digital 250GB 7200rpm 8M
Graphics Card: Radeon All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum
DVD Player: Sony DVD-RW-DRU500AX
Case: Thermaltake V2000

Other Features:
2.1 Sound System
19' LCD Screen from Samsung
All-in-one Printer from HP
400 watt power supply
Microsoft internet keyboard
Labtec optical mouse
Operating System: Windows XP

Also here are top ten improvements I have been thinking of doing;

1. Buy a GigaWorks S750 Speakers system from Creative Labs so I can utilize the 7.1 power of my sound card.

2. Buy two new sticks of 512MB PC-3200 DDR 400 MHz RAM so I have a total of 2.0 GB RAM space for my computer.

3. Buy a Radeon 9800 XT for my system so I have 256 MB of power instead of the 128 MB power of the All-in-Wonder I’m using
4. Buy a water-cooling system for my computer because it’s always at 40+ Degrees Celsius for temperature.

5. Either with or without the water system, I buy RAM cooling kits for my computer from thermaltake, along with a heating pipe system for my graphics card from thermaltake.

6. Buying a CPU with Hyper-threading or one at above 3.5 Ghz power

7. Upgrading my power-supply to a much quieter thermaltake power system.

[Erja]

I can't think of anything more you can do (or that is necessary)...but I did want to point out something. The difference between 128 MB and 256 MB video cards is negligible at this point. The biggest difference between the 9700 Pro AIW and the 9800XT is the GPU speed and architectural construction. So, don't worry about 256 MB video cards too much, they're mainly a waste of money at this point until games and other graphics intense applications catch up.

peace