I put this card with an AMD Atlone 2100 socket 7 chip running at 1.74GHZ on a Epox motherboard, the EP 8K5A2+.
It is an Athlon, Socket 462, AKA- socket A.
This is very much a work orientated machine
Now that we know where you are using it, we only need to know WHAT you are using it for. You mention "Dreamweaver and Fireworks plus Adobe CS2 Suite for example. When simultaneously messing with Indesign, Photoshop and Bridge". None of these should benefit even the tiniest bit from a video card upgrade, except I don't know what Bridge is (unless you mean the card game, but even if you do, it is doubtful a game like that would have even a tiny benefit from a newer video card either).
that is suffering from slow image updating.
When, exactly?
I believe the video card is the main source of the bottleneck.
Why?
Normally, in typical office applications such as MS office, websurfing, email, or other typical 2D window(ed) programs, a Geforce4 TI4200 is several times too fast to be a bottleneck. More often, when you see windows being redrawn slowly it is because the system has ran out of memory and the application is waiting for the paged data to come back into main memory- the video card can't display what the system can't draw- until that data is available in memory again, or in some cases, till the CPU is free (in buggy apps, multitasking where another app is set at an improperly high priority, or similarly, a virus or other malware misbehaving).
It could be (video) driver, but it's doubtful.
I was considering a Sapphire X1600 Pro but got a fright when I saw the pin connection arrangement on the box and fears of compatibility arose.
It would seem most expedient to not drift down this tangent until it is determined exactly what, where, and why your system is having some kind of problem.
However, your board uses an AGP Universal Slot, meaning it can support a newer AGP card though it will run it at 4X rate (max) instead of 8X. This is not going to be a significant performance penalty for a system based around an XP2100 CPU, for gaming or other graphically demanding (CAD?) uses. For general office work as suggested above, it will not matter the slighest bit since the GF4 Ti4200 is already overkill.
How much system memory is being used? Check Task Manager, the "Commit Charge", "Peak" value is what you need to know, AFTER having ran these demanding tasks and having seen the sluggish video.
Next, compare that Peak value to the amount of memory installed in the system, the "Physical Memory", "Total" value.
If the PEAK value is not at least 128MB lower than the TOTAL value (the extra 128MB to allow for a filecache so the OS code isn't continually being swapped out), definitely add more memory IF you want to continue using that system.
If the PEAK value is within 384MB, you may still benefit from adding memory, allowing an even larger persistent filecache (particularly after system has been running awhile or if files or apps are frequently reused).
If the PEAK value is never that close to the total, you are most likely CPU bound or have some other issue (possibly bad app priority or other OS or viri issue as mentioned above).
If your productivity is tied to profit or promotion, it seems reasonable to just shoot for a newer system if the budget allows. Might as well go for a platform using PCI Express, although even the newest/fastest systems today will not be bottlenecked at the tasks you described, by a GF4TI4200 (if they were AGP and could use it), except for "Bridge" which I mentioned above as an unknown variable.
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