ASUS gaming motherboard?

[98vert6spd]

I am interested in purchasing a better motherboard for several reasons

first off i cant get my soud card to work on my current motherboard
it used to work then after i put a new HD in i no longer have sound
and cant get it to work
therefore i conclude ive burned up my pci slots
i moved it to another slot but still its crap
the old board is an ECS 648 FX-a

im guess this is a crappy board
i have a P4 2600 800FSB 512cache
what does the 1mb cashe do?

512mb of 3200 DDR ram

radeon 9000 128MB

80GIG 7200 rpm HD

soundblaster live 24bit sound card

windows XP

and i run a cable modem that dowloads around 100kb on file sharing software
so i need an ethernet card

Ok now that you know the background
Im interested in Gaming of high end strategy games like empire earth and the new ones
none come to mid sorry
but the point is i want these to run really smoothly and not choppy at all

so heres my question
what motherboard do i need?
price does matter
If I could buy a mobo with a built in kick ass video card and built in sound card that would be sweet

My friend is interested in buying my current setup after i warranty my main board

If my budget was 450ish for a mobo new memory new processor what should i buy?

is 512mb too small?
with my currnt setup i have low frame rates on armies of exigo when there are a large number of units on the screen so what is the weak link in my system?
keep in mind i have a graghics card and sound card but id like to buy a motherboard with a better unit built in

My friend will purchase all of my things off of me so If i can find a MOBO with sweet options thatd be cool

one other thing to consider
Is my processor good enough or do i need to go higher?

I know im rambling but i need a pro to guide me in the right direction

 

[Praetor]

and I run a cable modem that dowloads around 100kb on file sharing software
so I need an ethernet card

Almost all mobos nowadays have onboard NICs so you dont need one

but the point is I want these to run really smoothly and not choppy at all

EE shouldnt be a problem for the R9000 ... I played

price does matter

So whats the budget

If I could buy a mobo with a built in kick ass video card

No such thing.

If my budget was 450ish for a mobo new memory new processor what should I buy?

What proc and memory did you plan on getting

with my currnt setup I have low frame rates on armies of exigo

No surprise there AOX is a fairly intese game. Its definitely several steps up from EE

I know im rambling but I need a pro to guide me in the right direction

1. Decide on processor
2. Decide on ram
3. Pick motherboard
4. Buy better video card

 

[robina_80]

get an amd64 proc (skt939) mobo with SATA connections and pci-e nforce 4 chipset preferably and yeah a gig ram

 

[98vert6spd]

well my computer completely died so i lost access to the forum all together
I went ahead and ordered the following

ASUS p4p800se motherboard

3.0e intel pentium 4 prescott with 1mb l2 cache

2 512mb 3200 ddr 400 memorry

and an 80gb HD

I still have my radeon 9000 128mb video card that ill use

and all of this is on a 550 watt powers supply
is there any weak link here?

how weak is my video card?

 

[tweaker]

The video card is quite weak and it's the bottleneck of your system, but try it out and see if it's enough for ya, if not you can always get a better one later on.

 

[98vert6spd]

what can you recommend for a video card

give me a good
better and best

price range also

were talking new egg prices
or if you know a better place then tell me where