How fast can I go?!

I have an MSI K7N2G NVidia nForce motherboard, with an Athlon XP 1.73 Ghz CPU, 1 GB memory, Firewire PCI card, 3 hard drives (my startup disk is a 10,000 RPM SCSI drive). I use Sony Vegas to edit video, and I want to know how fast a processor will this board take before I start wasting too much money or run into cooling issues without having a mega-fan? Or what is a good MB to upgrade to which will allow me to run a fast Athlon XP CPU, maybe the 3000 or 3200? Which socket? I'm not interested in overclocking, just the fastest reliable CPU to help speed up video rendering and processing. I use DSL (forget dialup!) for internet, but of course no CPU impact there anyway (duh). Looking forward to your experience, I need a bit of advice B4 shelling out the $$$! Thanks!

 

First off computers are money pits! LOL . I just upgraded to a amd2500+mobile. I plan to overclock it when I receive my new ram. I upgraded from a 2400+. Still using my old ram so won't know if it was worth it for the upgrade or not until I receive my new ram. I went this route because they want $300 for a retail xp3200. I don't know if your board has any overclocking utilities in the bios and you said you were not interested in overclocking, so maybe it time to ugrade to a athlon 64. In the long run I should have done this now looking back. I replaced my mb in the summer with a socket a without giving it much thought to the future. I am sure some members will help you out as far as a 64 upgrade if you go that route.

 

P4s are generally alot better for multimedia ... unless you want an AMD64

 

From doing a bit of reading, an AMD64 3000 and Abit 3rd eye socket 939 is the best bang for buck at the moment and will allow much faster cpu's when the prices come down

 

P4's are generally alot better = Bla, Bla, Bla, that's debatable.

Gennerally Pentinum is just plain Overated & overpriced!


For new Mobo for socket A = Asus mobo with Nforce chipset like this:
http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socketa/a7n8x-e-d/overview.htm
AMD cpu XP 2500 or higher.
AMD 64, go socket 939, and this Asus mobo:
http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/a8nsli-d/overview.htm

 

Ditto.