Motherboards & Procesors

AMD- Socket A : Basically a dead end upgrade path. AMD is not planning to release XP chips over 3200+ so what there is now is what you'll get. Socket A is not really a long term upgrade recommendation for those looking to keep the same motherboard down the road but with champs like the Athlon Mobile 2500+ it will remain a budget enthusiasts solution and is still quite attractive as a cheap, stable platform.

AMD- Socket 940 : AMD's current high end chipset for Opterons and Athlon FX's. The Athlon 64 3400+ showed that the differences between the enthusiast FXs and the high end 3400+ was not a night and day performance difference. It is hard to justify the purchase of the 940 because it looks like the just released FX-53 is the final CPU to be released for this platform. Toss that in with the fact that registered memory is needed and you're looking at a big heap of obsolete hardware next time an upgrade comes along.

AMD- Socket 754 : AMD's mainstream Athlon 64 board. The only real weakness is the lack of dual channel memory support the benefits of which seem a bit dubious at this point. Processors will be released for this platform till the end of the year at least so this may not be a bad upgrade choice especially for those eyeing the budget Athlon 64 3000+ and a faster CPU later on in the calendar year. What is interesting to note is that the Athlon XP may make an appearance (sans 64 bit instructions) but will have a onboard memory controller just like the Athlon 64.

TweakFactor Recommendation - Hold off on the currently available AMD64 boards. AMD is releasing Socket 939 which combines the dual channel memory support of the 940 with the Non-ECC memory of the 754. If one must upgrade, stick with the 754 as the there will be at least the 3700+ before the 754 is phased out. Socket A boards can be had for cheap as well as Socket A CPUs. With Mobile 2500+'s being able to hit 2600, 2700 Mhz on air alone, there is still a fresh breath of life left in this platform. Definitely worth close look especially with the number of Socket A boards out there.

Still a good value for the money but upgrades are likely to be nonexistant

Intel- Socket 478 : Intel's current socket type for the Northwood and Prescott processors. The last Northwood P4 is the 3.4 For the performance minded enthusiast this will not be a particularly good choice to upgrade to even though Celerons will continue to be available down the line.

TweakFactor Recommendation - Like AMD, Intel is transitioning their highend to a new socket type, the LGA-775. If a motherboard has to last for an upgrade cycle it would be well advised to hold off until the Grantsdale makes an appearance at the end of April. There are rumors that Soltek is looking at producing a Grantsdale based 478 board so it would mean that current processors might be able to work in a next generation board. This is sort of a crap shoot and really a stopgap solution that will still lead to upgrade problems on the processor side down the road. The flipside is that PCI Express should be available on the Grantsdale making more futureproof videocard purchases possible. Our recommendation is a tentative 'avoid me' due to the relatively high cost of P4s as compared to their dead end counter parts, the Athlon XP.