Need help on what to do with platform upgrade

Hello to anyone reading this.

My current system specs are:

Athlon x2 4050be

Gigabyte MA770 ds3 (rev 1) motherboard

2 x 1gb Corsair Dominator 1066 ram

Saphire radeon 4670 graphics card

2 x 500gb Seagate 7200.11 hard drives

Antec 380w eathwatts psu



I recently upgraded my pc with another 2 x 1gb of the Corsair Dominator 1066 ram only to have my PC constantly crash and lock up. I changed the ram about, entered manual settings into the bios, tried it with 3gb, and still no joy - it will only run with 2gb. I also bought the two hard drives mentioned in my spec with the intention of running them in raid 0 or in AHCI mode, but XP refused to accept the AHCI drivers after format.

After all these problems I'm getting, and with the Phenom II’s out, I’ve decided to sell off most of my PC, whilst keeping back the graphics card, hard drives and ram. The next upgrade I do, I want to last me for the next couple of years, and it will be used for gaming.

The main issue I am finding is to do with socket AM3 coming out. As far as I'm concerned, history has proven that Athlons/Phenoms are never too fussed about memory speeds. So shall I just buy a top notch motherbard (Asus M3A79-T) stick in an Athlon 7750 and wait for the Phenom II's to come down in price? or is socket AM3 likely to take a big lead over AM2+? Also do you think I'd be able to run those 4 sticks of DDR2 without any problem if I do that upgrade? Or would I simply be better off buying a Q6600 and P45 motherboard?