Don't get hung jup on Mhz, the AMD's and conroes are doing more per cycle, so are faster with less cycles, while using less power, which is nice. I would venture to say that the conroe will be twice as fast as your 3GHz P4 at somewhere less that 3Ghz.
You have selected a good time to start looking at upgrading because good things are happening.
boomboom is right, Moore's law is sort of on hold for now, meaning I wouldn't expect to see processors hitting an actual 5.0ghz anytime soon. To put it into perspective, AMD has been producing processors in the 1.5-2.8Ghz range for the past 6-7 years, but marketing them with a higher number, like 2600+, 3700+, etc. The reason for this is that AMD was the first to start designing the processor more intelligently, instead of just increasing CPU speed.
In order for these processors to sell (as compared to Intel, who was basically still on the Ghz race for higher and higher speeds) AMD had to use marketing to express that an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (which actually runs at 2.0Ghz) compares to an Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz processor.
As speeds increased beyond 3Ghz, Intel realized they couldn't keep increasing speed because the power requirements were getting outrageous, meaning high electricity bills, and the cooling requirements to keep the proc from melting down would have probably needed liquid cooling or better (read: expensive) just to make it work.
Finally Intel started designing the Core Duo which is modeled after the Pentium mobile (read: centrino) CPU, which is intel's low speed processor (1.8Ghz P-mobile is roughly comparable to a 2.4Ghz P4 for desktop). this redesign increases CPU performance (gaming, applications, etc) while lowering power requirements, cooling requirements and adds a 2nd processor core for the Core Duo.
Now Intel is getting on the better-bang-for-the-buck-at-less-ghz bandwagon with Core 2 Duo, which is basically a processor redesigned from the ground up to be great on energy, cooling and performance for an affordable price (the best of all 4 worlds). Read a few reviews online for the Core Duo...like this one
Core 2 Duo Performance Gains. I personally have been building my recent systems with AMD processors, but my main system for the past few years was a Pentium 4 1.8Ghz. I'll buy whatever processor is right at the time I am buying a computer.
Someone also suggested upgrading your RAM in your existing system from DDR-266 to DDR-400, but you said your system was "Maxed out". What this person was saying is that your current RAM is holding your processor's performance back. The other poster wasn't suggesting that you add RAM to your existing configuration, where some slots are filled with DDR266 (PC2100) and some are filled with DDR400 (PC3200), but rather in order to increase performance in your existing system, you would need to completely replace the DDR266 with the faster RAM. the reason for this is that if you mix fast and slow RAM, the system will slow down the fast RAM to match the speed of the slow RAM.
I also want to make sure you're using the term "re-build" correctly. Rebuilding would imply that something has gone wrong with your current system and you need to install replacement hardware and then reinstall the OS. Upgrading is what you would use to imply replacing existing, working hardware in your computer with something faster, better, etc. If you're looking at purchasing a new computer or component parts to build a new system on your own, this would simply be called a new PC build.
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