ATI Radeon 9700 Pro + MOBO + SBLIVE 5.1 Recommendation

[Bitter-Spock]

I am looking to upgrade my system starting with the video card.

I plan to get either the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro AGP or the All-In-Wonder version of the same card.

I have currently:
ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 32MB AGP
Asus A7V133 MOBO
AMD Athlon 1100Mhz
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Platinum (removed due to unstable system)

I am running win98se and I have had lots of problems with my video/sound/mobo combo.

I have pulled the sound blaster live 5.1 card out of my system and am using the integrated ac97 sound on the mobo instead (ugh!) But my system is more stable.

A couple of questions:
Will my new (once I buy it) Radeon 9700 Pro work with my a7v133? I realize it will not have AGP8x. How much of an improvement will I see over my existing Radeon?

My goal is to be able to run Unreal Tournament 2003 with max details at 1280x1024 w/32-bit color without seeing any chop.
This is the benchmark for me.

Second option is to upgrade the MOBO/RAM/Processor too.
Can anyone recommend a AGP8x MOBO which will work with both the
9700 pro and the SBLIVE 5.1 card without hanging and crashing?

Plan is to get a 2.6Ghz AMD XP or something like that. If you could also recommend something for the Pentium4 2.6 GHz, that would be great too.

Sorry if this should be in the motherboard section, but I need insight from someone who actually has the 9700 pro video card.

Any help would be appreciated...

[Kid Chaos]

Abit NF7-S or Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard
Two OCZ 256MB PC3500 Enhanced Latency (EL) memory modules
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (333MHz DDR FSB) processor

I don't own a ATi 9700, so based on your specific requirement, I can't give advice in that area. The integrated audio of the NF7-S and A7N8X Deluxe is top quality. No need for a PCI sound card.