This is a really tough question. I would also consider asking this in the hardware forum. I'm now running an AMD 2700+ on a pretty hot ASUS board and I've gotten about a 70% boost in performance over my older AMD 1.4. Geforce 4 Video, and always a Gig of RAM (too cheap not too basically). My advice would be to spend as much money on a CPU and a mothboard that will hold it plus a reasonably recent video card and fill in the rest as your budget allows. Very tough question. -Kix

-Kix