On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 13:06:30 -0400, Nicholas
wrote:

I have a 1 year old machine with a 2500 Athalon XP 510mb ram and SATA
hard drive. Assuming my Mobo is capable, what kind of improvement could
I expect if I upgraded to a 3200 Athalon 400? Would there be a
perceivable difference?


Perceivable, yes, but worth the cost and bother, probably
not. It's only about 20% clock increase and the higher FSB
will help some too, but the rest of the system will still
have same components. If you'd planned to sell the XP2500
and expect fair return on it, the upgrade might make more
sense, but even so you might be better off to get another
512MB of memory if you're itchin' to upgrade something.

For more substantial performance increase it's time to
rebuilt an Athlon 64 box.... but then again you didn't
mention what (tasks) need more performance.