Its ready for an OS upgrade.. just need to get around to save for it. I'm not impressed with Win8.
What do you mean it has little over 2gb because of the 7770? This is the first I hear of this 
Skuzzy & Ripley: I had not considered that possibility. Could be. Will see how I can get it done... my next upgrade is my HDD anyway. We'll see.
Ripley: My AMD fandom is the price not the performance per se. Like I said, a phenom II x4 955 runs any and all games out there pretty darn well and for under 100 bucks its something I like. I wont be getting a 300 dollar CPU to get what is essentially a not so visible performance boost in said games. I don't have that kind of cash to toss around. 
What I mean is that Windows XP is a 32-bit operating system. It can only use 4Gb of memory and even from that your display memory, memory reserved for peripherals etc. is removed. Because the 7770 has 1 gig of display memory it will leave less than 3 gigabytes of usable ram for your operating system and applications.
From your 16 gigs, 13 is completely useless when using XP. Even PAE won't help because the 32-bit drivers do not support it.
The AMD hardware has proven to be more problematic than intel, mainly because of hardware compatibility and driver problems. It can theoretically be one of the sources of stutter when combined with the new graphics card. Most likely however is that your OS installation is just messed up after having different brand drivers installed one after another.
I would try to do a clean reinstall of the OS before buying any new hardware. Clean setup and make sure you install up to date versions of all drivers, especially the motherboard drivers. Windows XP is fighting a lost cause already - as you've noticed manufacturers are dropping support for it completely. It's several years outdated.
