Upgrading, Intel Pentium D or Athlon 64

[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.

[SaSi]

Upgrade now to a Pentium D? This is two generations of CPU behind and, frankly, I doubt the 2.8G will give you much edge over the existing configurtation you have.

You should be looking at a Core 2 Duo CPU and a motherboard that is compatible.

[budz]

Here's a mobo combo w/ram for you:
AMD ATHLON 64 3200+ Orleans 2.0ghz AM2 processor $79.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819103031

CORSAIR DDR2 800 (PC6400) RAM (2) 512 mb $111.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820145566

BIOSTAR NF61VM2 Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX Mobo $53.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813138036

Total w/out shipping cost is $243.99. The BIOSTAR mobo has built in video. You can always decide later to install a PCI-E video card. It's over your budget of $225.00 but with this AM2 processor you'll still be able to upgrade later to a AM2 dual core processor.

Unfortunately with your budget of $225.00 it wouldn't be enough for a 2 core duo processor, mobo and ram combo. Unless you wait until the 2 core duo processors drop in price.