It's a geek's birthday soon! And you know what that means...

... PC upgrade!

Yes, my birthday is next month and i'm itching for an upgrade. No doubt i'll be getting money and whatnot on my birthday, because it seems no one knows what to get me as a teenager.

Anyways, i'm wondering what upgrade would be best. I'm willing to put at or around $100 into this upgrade. The question is, should i jump onto the Athlon XP-M bandwagon? Get better RAM? Any other ideas?

I also have a few questions about the XP-M's...

1.what's the best one to get? (lol what an open-ended question).

2.is there anything i need to know about running an XP-M in my desktop rig? such as bios upgrades, mods to be done, etc..?

Thanks for the advice.

AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2600+, 266 MHz FSB, 512K L2 Cache Processor - OEM
$99 at newegg

AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2500+, 266 FSB, 512K Cache - OEM
$90 at newegg

both bartons

http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?products_id=3606

i would suggest this one, im thinking of upgrading to it from my 2600+ AQYHA 0346 xpmw. i think one of these with a themaltight slk-947/ or sp-97 could do 2.6-2.7, not bad for air

Get the mobile from excaliberpc, mine is a rocket. [email protected]. You may also consider getting another hard drive and running raid. It made a world of difference to me. Of course, your board may not have SATA on it.

double your memory

So if i bought an Athlon XP-M, it'd run fine in my computer? Would i need to mod anything in order to get it to work?

I'm at excaliberpc.com, and i have my eye on the AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2500 AQYHA0410TPAW. Interestingly, that one costs $2 more than another 2500+ with a different stepping.

How does the 2400+M overclock?

I am looking to get a mobile too as soon as I come back from vacation in a month. From what I have read and seen, the steppings are more important than the ratings (2400/2500/2600). I think the once starting 'I' oc better (e.g. IQYHA is better than AQYHA etc) and for the last four letters of the steppings the once starting with 'T' are usually not as good of an overclock as the others (i.e. TPCW, TPAW etc....)

That's my $.02