I have a P4C 3.0 Northwood rite now, with 1 GB of DDR400,BFG 6800GT 256MB AGP..(yes AGP...) Soundblaster X-Fi extreme Music and A pair of 10k RPM WD HD in raid 0. This machine was hot 2 years ago and i upgraded the video card and soundcard recently. I want to upgrade the CPU and mobo so i can use the Windows 64 bit and Vista in the coming future.. but the problem is, i cannot find a decent mobo with AGP on it and i really want to build a small pc like the shuttle pc. what should i do? should i upgrade my pc or just keep this one until 2007 and buy a new pc?

I suggest Waiting. Two many new technology's are supposed to come out.

That thing may have been "hot" 2 years ago, but it'll still keep up very well today. Just because it won't cost someone $3000 new doesn't mean it's a slouch.

Your graphics card will support all the fancy stuff of Vista. 64-bit isn't living up to all it's made out to be just yet.

Are you having any specific problems with the hardware? i.e. do you need to upgrade? If not, then doing so would be a waste of money for now. Hell... I know a guy who's playing Doom3 on a PIII-1.2GHz... go figure.

well 64 bit will be nice.. and NX.. and SSE3.. my pc lack of all these new techologies and hmm.. It does lag sometimes when i play GW and BF2..If i want to upgrade my pc any decent mobo out there with AGP? I will probably go for AMD for now and buy the new Intel later.

NX - I don't have it, and it doesn't seem to affect my security at all.

SSE3 - Programs need to include SSE3 instructions to actually make use of these processors. I'm not entirely sure about games, but most programs that I can think of won't make use of SSE3 instructions until it becomes mainstream.

As for lagging... BF2 is just nuts when it comes to resource requirements. You see a massive (i.e. 100-120%)difference in performance when going from 512MB to 1GB of RAM, and even more performance gains when upgrading to 2GB. Dunno about Guild Wars though.

The big question you've got to ask yourself is whether or not its worth the money to buy upgrades now, and then shell out even more money when you decide to buy your next computer. Remember, computers are never an investment. What you buy today will be on the market for at least 25% less 6 months from now (generally speaking).

Hold on for the moment. Intel is pretty aggressive this year. Conroe and Merom are processors to watch out for. Who knows what AMD has up their sleeves. Not to mention new gpus coming out march I believe.

who knows what amd had up there sleeves? u kidding me, socket M2!!!

what good 939 Mobo out there still support AGP?Prefer Nvidia chipset.price around 100~130 Dollars. i will get the Athlon64x2 4200+ if i can find a decend board with AGP.If I cannot,i will just buy a new pc when Intel got his new dual-core out:)