Ready to make the switch...need help!

Ok, i've been pretty much an Intel user from the beginning with the exception of a few AMD K-7s that burned up within weeks. Those few AMDs pretty much put me on a hate streak with that company. Well their ways have changed and college life is really putting a cramp in my budget. My intel right now simply isnt cutting it and i want to sell my mobos and CPU and get a fairly good AMD combo. Right now from the looks of it, i'm going to have about $250 if I can sell my parts at the prices I want to sell them at. This is what i'm thinking about....

XP 3000+
NF7-S
SP-97

I want something that will pretty much slaughter my 2.4b yet overclock very well, and stay cooler than my current CPU. So what do you guys think?

Get an A64 2800+ in place of that XP 3000+; cheaper last time I checked, and way, way, way way faster. Pair it up with a Gigabyte K8NS Pro, MSI K8N Neo, or Chaintech VNF3-250 motherboard. EEither keep the P4 or get an A64, don't bother with the AthlonXP at this point; it would be a downgrade.

I don't see how it would be a downgrade at all from my 2.4b. I've heard that the 3000+ is compairable to the 3.0C. And that 2800 with the Gigabyte board is close to $300. Out of my range for the time being. :-\ If I went the 64 route, I would want to build a good one and not a really low end one. Unless even the low end ones slaughter the high end 32bit rigs.

The low-end ones do slaughter the high-end rigs. My 3200+ without being overclocked is pretty comparable to my AthlonXP T-bred at 2.6GHz. The AXP is not a good platform to invest in at this time. If you don't want to go the A64 route, then simply upgrade your processor.

Go with a A7N8X with a AMD *mobile* 2600XP-M and a nice H/F to OC it to 2.4 to 2.7 GHz or so... Budget but fast. Of cause if you wanted to "upgrade" your gonna be stuffed, but what I've learned along these years of my computing is "upgrading" never seems to work. You always need to buy a new CPU, M/B and RAM ... then most likelly a new vid card :| I reckon go the AMD mobiles