My plan is to upgrade the rig in my sig (my gaming / primary rig) without spending much at all. In fact I may try to do this with just 2 items.

* ASUS K8V (K8T800) motherboard
* AMD 64 3200+ retail box

I searched crucial.com and discoverd that my current pc2700 memory will work with this new board. I think I have enough IDE connections for my 3 hard drives and my 1 DVD drive. I was also going to swap in my 9600xt, the Antec ps, and maybe the SB Audigy 2.

Some things I'm wondering include:

* Will the pc2700 memory slow down the system noticable
* Will going from an agp 4x to agp 8x help in games
* How much of a difference can I expect between the xp2000 and the amd64 3200 (in games, regular applications, and video editing)

I was going to take the current parts in my main rig and transfer them to my HTPC. The extra parts in the HTPC go on the selling block. I was going to suffer with the loud stock cpu fan for a while and study up on my options (just read the article on the latest from Thermalright with the 120mm fan).

I'll take any advice on the idea, including my choice in products.

I have read that the A64s will work very well with slower memory. Can't remeber where I read this but they specificaly said to use your PC2700 memory unless you just felt like spending your money. The difference at most will be 1% to 2% on most apps.

Speed wise it should be about 60% faster than your Athlon XP 2000 for 32 bit apps that are CPU bound. If you have a 64 bit OS and fully optimized 64 bit apps you should see another 15% to 50% depending on the app for CPU bound apps. See http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=221045 for a thread that has 32 bit vs. 64 perfomance data.