Upgrading advice ad suggestions please!

[chrisinthesun20]

Depending on how my pack packet looks at the end of the month - I'm thinking about upgrading my PC as its starting to show its age - see spec in sig.

I'm only planning on changing my motherboard, processor and memory, as my graphics card, HDD DVD and CDRW etc are all good.

When it comes to price versus perfomance, what would your suggestions be for a motherboard, approporiate 512mb of RAM (type?), and a processor? (AMD or Intel?)

I'm looking to go to about a 2.5Ghz if I can afford it - I've always bought AMD as I feel you get more for your money...I'm not going to try and overclock, I just want a good processor/memory/motherboard combo that is quick and not really expensive - mainly for gaming/internet usage.

Also, do you think it'd be worth changing my HDD to? - (its an ATA-66 40gb one), will I notice a big difference going to an ATA-100 drive?

Any suggestions would be most appreciated as its been over 2 years since I upgraded so I'm not as up on the latest mobo's etc as I'd like to be (work tends to get in the way! )

[Disk_Contented]

Personally, i would allways buy AMD. They're better value, XP was apparently built with AMD in mind, and allways seem to give "snappier" performance than the equivalent Intel.

As for mainboards, the best advice is to read comparisons of boards. It has been shown that "cheap" SDRAM boards can wipe the floor with more expensive DDR types.
To avoid disappointment, do some background research.

A new HD will give you UDMA mode 5. Quite a step up from your DMA 3 unit you currently use.