Upgrade now or wait????

A lot of this will be dependent on what you do with your machine. Do you need a 1.4 or a 1.0 T-Bird? Do you want a 1.5 Palamino or a 1.0 Palamino?

If you are an every day Joe, just doing Word, Excel, and Email, then the answers will be easy for you, all depends on your pocket book. For about $250, you could actually get a retail 1.4Ghz T-Bird, and an IWill 266FSB Motherboard retail. I'm basing this on place like www.compuplus.com and www.pricewatch.com.

Iwill KK266 KT133A ATA 100 ATX Motherboard 266FSB (for AMD Thunderbird cpus) - Retail Box 117.00

AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 GHZ Socket A 266FSB Retail Box 127.00

Let's take this one step further, in a month or two, AMD will be coming out with faster Palamino chips, somewhere in the area of 1.5 - 1.6 Ghz(closer to 1.5 i think). This being said, new motherboards will be coming out, which should force the two above I just mention to drop even more.

I personally will be upgrading the first of next year, probably in January or February. I will probably be going with a 1.2 - 1.4Ghz Palamino. The 1.2 should be very reasonable in price. Also the Palamino are supposed to run about 10% faster than the T-Birds and cooler.

So here's the jist, if you are completely frustrated right now with your computer, then something like the IWill board and 1.4Ghz will make you very happy i'm sure. You can also overclock that, if you're lucky, to ~1.6Ghz.

If not, then a little more patience and you will be able to pick up a Palamino Board and Processor, which will make you even happier for pretty cheap ;-)

What are the apps that are slowing you down?

If nothing else wait for the next three weeks and check out all the new boards coming out with the nForce and latest SiS chipsets, plus Palomino will be annouced and probably include another round of price cuts.

Personally, I'm waiting to base my next PC around the Thoroughbred chip, Serial ATA and whatever chipset supports this best at the time.

<font color=blue> The Revolution starts here... as soon as I finish my coffee </font color=blue>

I'm about to build a new system and have fallen victim to the "wait and see" attittude. There will always be something I want fixing to hit the market. Gets kinda aggravating. lol

--Wassamatta you?--

If you're a gamer - which I suspect looking at your video card - , keep your mb, cpu & ram, and get a GF2Pro. Upgrade the rest when you want, but I'd try some overclocking first. Your cpu will likely do 900+, which should be enough for any game out there.

---- Owner of the only Dell computer with an AMD chip

>My suggested Motherboard+CPU+RAM package is just slightly over your budget but will give you the most bang for the buck

Depends.. not for gaming. You can get a GF2 Pro for something like $120 these days.. that will double your framerates in many games. Getting a 1.4 + new mb + new ram isnt going to get you much extra frames in most games when you play 1024+ x32bit with an MX card... video cards are still the prime bottleneck with current games, especially an MX card. I've got a Duron 600@933 with an MX myself.. i recently borowed a GF2 Pro from a friend.. the improvement was MASSIVE..


---- Owner of the only Dell computer with an AMD chip

I think I'll save my money and do an all out upgrade including my video card. I had originally purchased a Radeon 64 Mb DDR VIVO card but my system kept shutting down and re-starting (I think my Mobo is not supplying enough power to the AGP slot???). This way I can use my old system for mundane tasks (e-mail, browsing etc...). Thanks for all the suggestions. By the time I purchase 3-6 months I should be able to pick up a GF3 for a reasonable price!!!