Need help on deciding on upgrade

[tgm4883]

Ok, I have been looking to upgrade and now have a little money to do so. I plan on being in the neighborhood of 225. I will be upgrading from an athlon xp 2000+ with 768MB of ram. I use Ubuntu 6.10.

Now looking at my options I feel it would be best to upgrade my Motherboard, Ram, and Processor, but would still like to be able to upgrade down the road my video card and perhaps a processor if needed. I am currently looking at two configurations I found at a local store (PC Club)

Config 1:
Gigabyte MATX CONROE 945GZ GA-945GZM-S2
INTEL Pentium D 820 2.8GHz RETAIL processor (Pentium D 915 +40)
KINGSTON 512MB Valueram DDR2 533 - PC4200 CL4
Total $234.98

Config 2:
GIGABYTE GA-M61VME-S2 nForce 400 mATX Motherboard - Socket A
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Socket AM2 (Retail)
KINGSTON 512MB Valueram DDR2 533 - PC4200 CL4
$224.98

I do light gaming (Heavy gaming is what the 360 is for), but what I really want to do is start encoding videos for my PSP as well as have a faster machine.

I haven't really heard much about the Pentium D, heard much more about the core duo, and the X2 is an option to upgrade at a later date (The amd board supports X2 while the intel board supports Core 2 Duo). I figure dual core 64-bit is the way to go. Im just not sure the performance difference I will see between these two so I figured I would ask here.

[Brainfart]

The Pentium D was Intel's first shot at a dual core proc, and, well, there's a reason why you've not heard much about it. I'd go for the AMD out of those two options, or perhaps wait a few months and get a Core 2 Duo later. Running most any Linux, a 2000+ will still last a while, so unless the upgrade is necessary you might consider waiting to grow the budget a li'l. I figure it's not worth wasting the money on a processor now if you're just gonna replace it first chance you get anyways... ;)

[Omnios]

Personally I am waiting about 6 months which is around the time I get my income tax refund. Anyways I find processors etc have a huge drop in price after about being released about half a year or a year ago. I did this with the box I have now and saved about $900 or so. I also discoverd the power of bare bones and cpu motherboard conbo's where you can update to a really nice system for a lot less.