I imagine that when you are talking about a 2.8, you are referring to an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ since your motherboard supports Socket A chips.

There are many 3200+ AMD chips: ClawHammer, Venice, and Winchester. These processors use either the Socket 754 or the Socket 939. Since your board supports only Socket A chips, you cannot use any of those listed chips. If you want to upgrad to one of those chips, you will need to upgrade your motherboard. If you upgrade your motherboard, you will most likely also want to upgrade your RAM to take full advantage of the increased speed of the system bus and processor.

What is the problem that you are experiencing that causes you to want to upgrade your system?

Hi, thanks for getting back to me so quick. The reason for upgrading is that everything is running so slow it is unbelievable. Even doing things like WORD, it can freeze and I have to restart. I didn't realise my motherboard was socket A, and the PCU I've picked is socket 939, so that settles that. I was going to use my own graphics card, but I don't know if that'll be possible now having to change the motherboard, what do you think?

Hi, thanks for getting back to me so quick. The reason for upgrading is that everything is running so slow it is unbelievable. Even doing things like WORD, it can freeze and I have to restart. I didn't realise my motherboard was socket A, and the PCU I've picked is socket 939, so that settles that. I was going to use my own graphics card, but I don't know if that'll be possible now having to change the motherboard, what do you think? I know I've been using the computer for 5 years, but I'm illiterate due to head injury on the tech side.

I've looked up the items I think I will require, here they are.
Arctic Cooling T2 Silentium
ASUS A8V Rev2 (939/AGP)
1024MB DDR400-DUAL RANK Kit (2x512Mb)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64
200Gb Maxtor 7200/133 (8Mb Cache)

What exactly are you looking for in a system joelynx? Are you a regular gamer or just an office user? If you're just using the PC for a bit of word processing and internet surfing then you might want to look into a fresh start with a Windows reinstall.

Also note that your system is made up of many other components that affect performance - perhaps a simple RAM upgrade can make life that much easier.

Sorry for not getting back sooner. When I boot up, I can't get any further than the windows logo, then the screen goes black. I tried restarting, and going into the bios. I went through everything, and the m/b doesn't recognise anything that's been installed. HDD, DVD-RW, CD-ROM, nothing!
So from what I can gather, it's the m/b that's gone in my opinion. So, I'll try another one and see how it goes from there.
Thanx bud!

I dont believe that it is your mobo, due to the fact that you can get to the Windows loading screen. I believe your computer has a nasty cold, possibly even a virus...I would suggest reformatting the HDD. This is at least worth a try, especially if your computer was fast enough for you before you began to encounter problems. If you decide to use your machine for gaming, rendering, or video/photo editing, then an upgrade is recommended. Best of luck, Mav.