amd 2700xp to e6400 upgrade?

hi everyone, ive been wanting to upgrade my computer for a long time now, think my sig might need to be updated but its pretty much the same, 2700xp at stock (2.166) i think 2gig 2700 ram and a 6800gt AGP

what i am planning to do is to slowly upgrade my mechine, over say a year or so (because i am a student, and i have the money (just about) but best to spred it out over a long time, and also means if i run short on cash, i can just halt spending money on my computer for a bit

basiclly i play a lot of games, really want to have top end but no way can i afford more than £350 at the present time, so what i was planning to do was to get e6400, and a agp mobo, and to use my graphics card for a while till i have more money to really go for a pcie setup (seen agp core 2 duo boreds for around £40), as i do some video editing, little bit of photo shop, downloading and general messing around on my computer stuff

but i wanted to know peoples opionons, i know that a 6800gt would be a bottle neck, but its not at the moment, my processor limits me at present, but i dont know what ram i should get, so far the only AGP 775 boreds supporting core 2 duo seem to only get max of ddr 400, and going from 2gig 333 to 512/1 gig poss 400 i thought would not be worth it, i was wondering if anybody else has ever done a slow upgrade, graduly replacing parts every few months or so?

overclocking i would like to do, but not untill i have full setup so mobo only needs to really take desent ram/agp at present

what do you think? - and also has anybody ever noticed a sig improvement from anything close to my AMD 2700+ xp to a 2duo?

or, as i fogot to add, would it be better to go for a petium 4 (excuse my spelling) high end D as they are cheaper setups at present, but then again not as good as the new intels

I'd go for an e6400, some good RAM, and a good mobo. I did that, and I'm upgrading from a 3800x2 (which I had at 2.5ghz for a while).

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=486610

I understand why you want to upgrade in stages, but you'll end up spending more in the long run doing that. You'll have to start out with a marginal motherboard to run DDR and AGP. By the time you get a new PCI-E vid card and decent DDR2, you'll need to upgrade motherboard too. If I was doing this, I would buy good components one at a time as I could offord them, CPU, motherboard, RAM, vid card, then build the system when I have all the components. You can probably get more out of your old system as a combo too.

What batboy said. Set a price watch on your components, and buy them 1 at a time. Watch for rebates and free shipping deals. You can probably save quite a bit that way.

that seems like a possible idea, buying them over a while, might take a bit more planning on components i think, but the thing is i really enjoy the whole puting bits together, adding an upgrade, dont wanna sound sad but i like it, i wouldn;t say im a geek or anything but its nice to be able to spend a bit, and enjoy it. but i might look into how much i would spend both ways, for a long upgrade path, or just buying all the bits over a while.

I agree it would be better to sell off your computer now and then to put all the money together toward a new PCIe board and card and DDR2 RAM

Just my $0.02