PC Hardware Question

So I've got some cash laying around after Christmas and everything, and I'm almost pressured to get some new pc hardware. 
Here's the thing.  I'm still rocking a regular PCI card.  I have a decent (relatively) cpu (3.2ghz hyperthread), but I wanted ya'll opinion on one thing...

If I were to buy a new motherboard, would it be accepting of all my current hardware?  I plan on upgrading piecemeal, and the motherboard would be the first replacement in my mind.
So would I be safe if I just moved all my things off the current board, and onto the next one, or would I need all the drivers and such for the hardware I own now?

A new motherboard will accept your hardware things such as PCI stuff...ect....your cpu, ram will be your problems you will need to do good research on a new motherboard to make sure it will support your cpu and ram, if it supports your cpu then it will likely support your ram.

Hyperthreading? Must be a Pentium 4, which by this point is a pretty well outdated architecture. Intel's push for teh megahurtz while not considering optimization in Pentium 4s is why AMD was considered better for a while.

Now I understand wanting to upgrade piecemeal, but there's a point where you have to replace a number of components at once.

• Even if you're lucky, and the P4 is an LGA775 socket, the i7 chipsets are incompatible with P4/Core/Core 2 CPUs due to a major memory architecture change. Not terrible, considering Core 2 is still pretty good (and much cheaper than i7), but something to consider.

• Also consider that your current RAM is probably DDR (or Rambus if you're unlucky). DDR2 is pretty much the standard at this point. Good news is that it's pretty cheap now (I got 4GB DDR2 800MHz for $65 as a combo with my motherboard)

Yea thanks guys.  I did some reading around, and it looks like I'll be able to build a nice hold-out computer til I'm really ready to drop some dollars come 2010 when I build my real pc.  But it seems like I'll just be holding onto my monitor for now.  Looking to get 4gigs of ram, a motherboard/CPU combo, video card, and a quality PSU.  I'll be holding onto the rest of the stuff (soundcard, speakers, mouse, keyboard, monitor, etc.)

I pretty much new the answer was going to be leaning in the negative direction, I'm just a huge tightwad when it comes to tech type purchases, since the turnover rate is that quick in our area.

Thanks whole bunches Baker and Bunny!

And yea, It's a PCI Radeon X1300, 256mb.  Really really low key, but I can run FEAR, HL2, UT2004, Doom 3, and Rome: Total War - they're not the max settings, but it works for me.  Some decent games, but there is so much stuff out there since 2004 that I'm wanting to get into!