WOW!!!!!! Great post, guys!!! I am in dire need to upgrade my comp, too. Everything you guys are saying is supporting all the info I have found in my research. Thanks for the info! Definitely going w/ AMD!

 

AMD hands down. My T-bird 1Ghz w 512MB PC133 still flies after almost 2 years. This is the longest lived CPU/mainboard I've ever had, will last at least another year. One suggestion, most Athlon boards have IDE RAID. Use it! You will not believe the speed increase. If you don't care about security, get 2 IBM GXP120 drives and stripe them. If you do, get 4 and mirror the stripe. IBM drives are the fastest by a big margin if a little noisey.

I can only imagine how fast an XP 2100+ w/ 512MB of DDR and 4 GXP120 drives are.

 

what is wrong with the duron chip, is it worth the extra cash to get the athlon?

 

if you want speed then get the athlon or even better the newer XP chips.