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CPU/mobo (and maybe more upgrade)...anyone know a lot about hardware?

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mwb1100:
I took a look on NewEgg for the Intel Core Duo (E6320) you said to get, and its only 1.86Ghz :(
-wreckedcarzz (May 17, 2007, 09:22 PM)
--- End quote ---

Be careful comparing raw clock rates.  The Core 2 Duos are faster than Pentium 4's at any given clock rate.  If you look at Tom's Hardware CPU Comparison (Call of Duty 2 benchmark here: http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=450&model2=433&chart=165), the slowest Core 2 Duo they benchmark is the E6400 at 2.13 GHz.  It's faster than the fastest P4 they benchmark, the P4 EE at 3.73 GHz.

You can really only compare clock speeds within a chip family.

dk70:
Think you should either get a used socket 478 cpu or dont upgrade. New motherboard also means new video card and new memory - perhaps also new power supply.

If going new do get Core 2 Duo or a cheaper AMD X2. If you want to assemble and save money look for a motherboard/cpu bundle and get a case with installed power supply. Also a nice way to get rid of bad products but you can get lucky. Add may be 90-100$ for decent video card and 40/70$ for 1GB/2GB DDR2 ram and you can compute/game a lot faster.

May be set up an account at Newegg and use their wishlist feature to get on top of total cost and relationship between different combinations. 1300 is a slow card so may be the very best onboard video will be ok until you have money for real card. Must pay a little extra for motherboard then.

mwb1100:
Here's another take on Pentium 4's vs. newer dual core CPUs:  http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000867.html

As dk70 indicates you probably have a socket 478 CPU (Willamettes came initially on socket 423, but yours is probably socket 478).  To get a short-run upgrade cheaply, you might want to look at an inexpensive socket 478 CPU upgrade (http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=271) - though I'm not sure that dropping in any socket 478 CPU will necessarily work - you may need to do some research.

In the longer run, Mouser's advice of saving for a new system makes sense.  If you do decide to go for a bigger upgrade now, DDR2 RAM prices seem to be dropping nicely right now - there are a lot of opportunities to pick up 2 1GB modules for less than $80.

Also, as others mentioned - you might get more bang for the dollar upgrading video.

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