Not an easy choice really. Your system is pretty good as it is and should game well for the next year. It's also fairly evenly matched and was a very nice rig in it's day. That said, as with me you are already experiencing the need to turn down resolution, details, and other eye candy to keep it running smooth. Problem is, you have a tough system to upgrade. And it depends on the game what would show the best increase. More often than not in todays games I'd guess the X800XT would show a boost in performance on your system over your 9700 pro.
Your motherboard may support a faster Pentium 4-B(533 bus Northwood) processor than your current 2.53Ghz model, but it is hard to justify spending money on a small gain in performance you'd get going with the 2.8Ghz or even 3.06GHz. SO I wouldn't recommend a CPU upgrade.
Your Rambus memory, although the fastest of it's day, is basically dead nowadays, so you won't be reusing that on your next system. That tacks on a large extra cost buying 1GB of DDR , making it a CPU/mobo/ram upgrade all at once if you were to upgrade to say an Athlon 64.
Kinda brings us down to Video card like you first asked. Will it be worth the upgrade to a X800XT and be able to really shine paired with that system? That's the big question. Your system is a little behind but pretty close to a Pentium 4 2.4C (800 bus). SO you can look for comparisons with the P4 2.4C showing how the new graphics cards compare.
While [H] didn't test all cards on the Pentium 4 2.4C, we can conclude based on what is available that you will see a big increase in Doom3 playability/performance on your system if you upgraded to a X800XT.
Look at the Radeon 9800 pro on a <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTA5MDc4NzE0M1RPNjJBTU9FV1hfOF8zX2wuZ2lm" target="_new">P4 2.4C</A> and on a <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTA5MDc4NzE0M1RPNjJBTU9FV1hfOV84X2wuZ2lm" target="_new">3.0C</A>. Same settings and equal performance meaning the 9800 pro is what is the bottleneck. Now on the same P4 3.0C, stick in a <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTA5MDc4NzE0M1RPNjJBTU9FV1hfOV81X2wuZ2lm" target="_new">X800XTpe</A> and the playable settings/performance skyrockets. Interesting to see that with a X800XTpe upgrading from a P4 3.0C to an <A HREF="http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTA5MDc4NzE0M1RPNjJBTU9FV1hfMTdfNV9sLmdpZg==" target="_new">AMD FX53</A>(much faster gaming chip) gives no gain, meaning with a 3.0GHz cpu and up <b>at those high resolution/details</b>, the X800XTpe is the bottleneck and not the P4 3.0C.
What does this all mean to you. I'd say that in Doom 3 the X800XT would allow you turn up the playable resolution and details compared to your R9700 pro. Now your cpu may/will bottleneck the X800Xt before the P4 3.0C, but still looks promising as to a nice visual gain while remaining playable.
Keep in mind other games may be completely CPU limited and may show little to no gains upgrading the video card on your system.
Anyway, maybe Buying a faster Video card now is your best option if you MUST upgrade now. Just means you'll want to look for an AGP mobo when you upgrade the rest of the system so you can still use the X800XT.
ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 1GB Corsair XMS 4000 Pro Series, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt
Anyway, I agree with you on the OC solution/ and the AGP/PCIe dilema.
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