video card/system issue please help

[pencapchew]

Hello all. I have this problem about choosing the right video card for my system. To be honest, this post is going to include more issues than just on a video card, so I do apologize but I want a really good system. Let me first elaborate a little on my current rig.

AMD athlon 1.0 Gigahertz CPU
ASUS A7V133 Socket A mobo
KT133A Chipset
Inno 3D Kyro 2 4500 64Mb video card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCI sound card
512 megs of Visiontek SDRAM
Windows 98 SE


Well those are the basics. I forgot to mention I have a 17 inch monitor that is about 3 years old(scrapped it from my old emachines computer) and a Cd-RW from my emachines as well. My problem here is I love gaming, especially FPS games. I am obcessed with getting awesome frame rates with NO noticable SLOWDOWN any time in a game, an example being a common shootout with 7 bots in Unreal Tournament. With my current Kyro 2 card, its decent. For example, I only get slowdowns in games like Unreal Tournament, Medal Of Honor Allied Assault, Aliens versus Predator 2(in the single player mode when I am facing lots of aliens) etc. Real time strategy games and older FPS like Quake 2 run just fine. Don't get me wrong, the games are playable, but I despise slowdowns. Unreal Tournament is notorious for slowing down when I am facing lots of bots. The Frames per second arent too bad where its unplayable, just around the 40-50 range, and to my eyes, that seems a lot slower than 65 fps +. I want a video card(and system if I need to upgrade my cpu speed, ram quality, etc...) that can crank out a minimum FPS in heavy action scenes of at least 60 FPS. I want it so that my eyes do not perceive any slowdown at all in the game for that matter. I know there is a certain point where the human eye can't distinguish more frames per second. Let me add that I don't have to get 200 fps in a game. I just want it to be where its a smooth fps all the way thru and to me 60fps constant is just fine, no need for 200 plus Another thing I might add is that I hate aliasing in games. With my current video card, use application specified anti-aliasing just to keep my fps up. I like eye candy. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I hate the jagged edges with the card i have now. Now, what exactly is vsync for? People have told me to disable it to get better frame rates. It seems when I do, the graphics look even worse that with it enabled. A video card where I can have lots of anti-aliasing enabled(2x or even 4x and vsync enabled(whatever that is) is what I want. Money is sort of an issue but if I have to dish out 400 bucks I could easily have it within a month.
Choices I have been pondering:

GeForce 3 Ti200
GeForce 3 Ti500
GeForce 4 Ti4600
ATI Radeon 8500

Considering my cpu speed is only 1000 megahertz, could this be a chokepoint? I have been thinking about upgrading my computer half and half, meaning I would only buy a new case, powersupply, new cpu/mobo and vid card and keep my 512 megs of SDRAM, 17 inch monitor, Cd-Rw, my 30 gig Maxtor Hard drive, my sound card, modem, etc. All in all, what do you all suggest as a video card and cpu/mobo combo and type and amount of RAM for a really good gaming system with no slowdown noticable to the human eye? Thank you all for your time.

[cavill]

buy a new graphics card now either the geforce 4 or radeon 8500 then when you can afford it get new psu, mobo,cpu and ddram, and sell your old mobo cpu and ram

[NDD]

Money is sort of an issue but if I have to dish out 400 bucks I could easily have it within a month.

Hehe

OK, so get yourself GF4Ti4600 (it beats Radeon 8500 everywhere), and if you have any money left try getting AthlonXP of about 1700+ (you gonna need updated BIOS for your mobo to support this one) ... and enjoy 60+ FPS with 4x FSAA

No need to replace anything else, 512MB of RAM is sweet enough

[Rugor]

What ND said.

Gf4 Ti4600

then save up more money and get an XP.