Upgrade possibilities

[vsp]

Okay, now you guys've done it. You've got me thinking about what I should do with my Athlon, and now my head hurts.

Current system:

Athlon (T-Bird) 1300 / 256MB PC133 SDRAM / 60GB HD (mostly full) / ASUS A7V133 mboard / ASUS GeForce2 GTS 32MB / LG CED-8120B (12x8x32x) CD-RW / Win98 SE / SB Live! Value / (Verizon-provided) DSL modem / ethernet card

The three pieces I've been debating about upgrading are:

* an extra 256MB of RAM ($40 or so at my local shop)
* LG GCE-8520B (52x24x52x) CD-RW (faster, has buffer underrun prevention, even more compatible with CloneCD: $58 at local shop)
* bigger/second hard drive (a necessity; I'm in the burning-files-to-CDRs-to-make-room stage; prices vary wildly)

With an 80GB or bigger HD figured in, I'm looking at around $200 or so in upgrades here.

Point two is that ever since my wife discovered the wonders of peer-to-peer, computer time is at a premium whenever she's home. I'm debating if it'd be cost-effective to just build a second system around the above parts as a gaming rack, and use the 1300 as the DSL workhorse (side effect: finally burying my old P-133 Packard Bell monstrocity).

After doing some homework, if I'm building new, I see no reason not to go with an ASUS GeForce4 Ti4200 as the centerpiece (about $150 at local shop). That ought to be competitive for quite a while to come. If I'm upgrading my current system, I know enough to stay away from the GeForce MX lines. Are there any GeForce3 cards out there that'd be a measurable upgrade (i.e. pixel shading goodness), and are cheap enough to make them a reasonable purchase instead of shelling out the cash for the Ti4200?