I have decided that I will upgrade my home machine. It is currently a 1ghz PIII w/ 512mb ram. I find this lagging. I am looking for a fairly new processor around the 3ghz range. I would like to have 1.5- 2gb of ram. I would also like support for a SATA drive.

My current dilemma is whether I should go AMD 64 or Intel… Intel is a little cheaper, but AMD 64 would allow me to experiment w/ 64bit development. If I could get a board that supports dual processors, then all the better…

My ideal price range for all of this would be around $500 or so… I don’t know if I can do that w/ the RAM requirement, but that is the price range I’m shooting for.

Does anyone have any recommendations about this?