Video Card Question

A big part of the answer is what kind of audio interface do you have. If it's a PCI card I would lean against adding a video card that may end up hogging available PCI bandwidth. I remember back in the old days a common phrase from tech support at DAW software and hardware companies was "there's a conflict with the video card." With AGP that has dropped off but probably not totally since a bad AGP video card can still hog bandwidth that can affect audio interfaces.

Have you tried disabling all the visual effects in XP? I'm not sure it would help but also try using the classic mode for the XP appearance.

kryon,
Typically, onboard video will use 8 to 64mb of system ram. And you are right, it is noturiously sluggish.
IRQ conflicts were common in earlier versions of Windows, but XP handles this much better.
AGP is faster, but for your purposes, PCI will be fast enough. You would see a huge inprovement.
I am running dual monitors from a nVidea 6600(AGP) on a 2.4ghz P4, with virtually no drain on the CPU.
Make sure you get one for standard PCI, not PCI Express. It's not the same. I see that most X1300 cards are PCI Express, so be careful.