Two upgrades

[BBigJ]

I think I'm about to convince my wife that we need to upgrade her machine (1 Ghz Athlon), and while we are at it we should probably do mine too, right? (XP 1600+ @1.5-1.7Ghz) So, after trying to get myself caught up with the current market it seems to me that the hardware companies have compensated for their lack of innovation with a remarkable creativity in marketing (translation: I have no idea what all these product names mean.) I'd appreciate any advice on what the best buys are or will be in the near future (this upgrade will happen between may and august).

CPU:
Last time I upgraded this was a no-brainer, AMD all the way. Now, the prices are very comparable so there is a debate here. I'm looking for the best bang/buck I can find. Ideally I'd like to get two low rated chips with some headroom and take whatever OC comes easy. I'll probably go A64 for my machine (for the gaming performance). But my wife's is a little more in the air. She does a lot of photoshop, and (with our baby on the way next month) she will probably start to use the digital camcorder too. Given this, is she better off with AMD or Intel?

Video:
The vid card has been my major roadblock for upgrading for quite some time. I want to get a decent gaming card for myself, but with the baby coming I'm not sure I can justify spending $300 when I don't know how much I will have a chance to use it. Regardless, I want to get a PCIe board for myself, and my wife will get an AGP board and inherit my Radeon 8500.

Mobo:
What are the current hot boards these days? Obviously this will depend on which direction I take in CPU's and vid cards (I have no interest in SLI).

RAM:
I guess all overclocking happens in FSB these days, so what grade RAM do I need? (BTW, what is the standard "Dell" ram speed these days?) Where is the best place to buy it? Last time I upgraded I just got pc2100 from Crucial and I was able to clock it up to almost 150. That was a long time ago.

I think we are in good shape for all the other components. Any suggestions? How much will this upgrade cost?

Thanks.

[subtotal]

if you check out the cpu index on the main page you can get a fair idea of how far a particular chip will go, athlon64s don't technically have fsb due to their on-die memory controller, but i undestand the mechanics are basically the same

these days most of us have between 512MB and 1GB of ram... the speed of the ram is important pc3200 is the most common, ddr2 is currently only used on intel based chipsets. but if you have the money geting higher speed ram will give you more headroom.

as for the video card the nVidia 6600GT is around $200 is availble for AGP or PCIE and is a good performer.

for the motherboards i think an nForce4 chipset would be a good option, although i wouldn't rule out SLI at this stage

[Yuriman]

I believe my signature is a pretty good indicator of a good system on a budget(for pci-e).