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"really appreciate some help as im gonna upgrade my computer."

I am running a 1ghz athlon processor on an abit kt 7 raid motherboad with 192 mb ram. It all runs fine but i'd quite like to upgrade so i can enjoy top level performance. Upgrading is definitely the best option as most of my other components are only about a year old (the motherboard and cpu were sold onto me by a friend). I have a new, floppy drive, dvd drive, brand new cd writer, newish 40gb hard disk, 64mb graphics card, audigy sound, and a new case with 300 watt power supply. and will easily be able to find a techie who can help me/do the hard bits!

I don't want to spend silly moneybut could budget about 250 quid to improve my computer.

Obviously i need a new processor and hence a Motherboard as a highend processor would be to much for the old one. Also braced for the cost of new ram as obviouly that is unlikely to be compatible (currently got 168 pin).

Just wondering what people recommend and how you think i can get the best value for my money.

Just looking at new processors on a few websites and the prices don't seem outrageous. Looked at:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/default2.asp

and thought the athlon xp 2600 looked pretty good value. Any thoughts?

Of far more concern really is the motherboard, as i have a rough idea on processors (rough i admit!), I really haven't got a clue what would be the best motherboard to pick up, I'd really appreciate it if some one could maybe give me a few pointers at the best ways to get the best value for my money and perhaps any products you'd particularly recommend.

Thanks, ashley

Ebuyer and Crucial! nice and efficient! everything arrive first thing this morning!

SATA is the sequel to ATA133, allows speeds to what would be ATA150 with current drives, will be increased in the future with better drives.

Basically SATA is a new kind of IDE cable.

heh heh

Serial ATA

SATA??

(thats probably a no!lol)

You going SATA?

Let me know cos if you are you may need to do some tweaking. Nowt serious tho..

Mmmmm dual LAN... never used it.

thanks craw, i spoke to a few people and they said there was litle to chose between the two of them, my mate said that too, but he said he knows some one with the asus and it runs great, so i went with that as he is gonna help me install it.

thanks guys

I have the A7N8X Dx 2.0 and have had absolutely no problems whatsoever.

A great board.

order pl;aced! should be here on tuesday. as above plus 512 mb of crucial's finest ram.

Thanks guys i'm pretty much ready to order now! thanks for everyone who gave me some help. ashley

The NF7-S and A7N8X are indeed pretty much identical, save for the dual LAN on the ASUS board. However the NF7-S is a bit cheaper, easier to overclock, comes with a parallel->serial ATA adaptor and generally seems to have less issues with it than the A7N8X. But as someone on another forum pointed out, that's probably because there are more A7N8X's. The EpoX 8RDA+ and 8RDA3+ are also comparable boards, the 8RDA3+ coming with Serial ATA and the former without it.