recommend mobo + cpu

How y'all doin'? I've got a friend that wants me to put together a new setup for her. She does a LOT of Ebay and has 3 or 4 websites open at a time along with 2 or 3 e-mail programs and a couple spreadsheets. I have built a few systems (just for piddling around with video recording and minor gaming), but am not sure of what she needs to be running all these apps at the same time. She has a budget of $500 and I am looking toward a new mobo with proc and ram. I am not real familiar with the athlon 64's and am not sure if they will work better in this situation than the athlon xp's. Any help y'all may be able to provide will be greatly appreciated.
thanks,
gatormike
my friend thanks you too.

;)

Web, multitasking with many browsers open and all that...

definately Intel P4 w/ HT tech and a nice value for money mobo to go wid that. Will do better than Athlon xp 64 for her needs, and may b a little cheaper too if u r on a budget.

People tell me if I'm wrong but I'm sure its pretty much the way forward with what she needs

hav fun building the new system

For the things you mentioned, Multi-page web-browsing, spreedsheat program, and email can all be done with a very cheap system. While Intel HT processor are better at multitasking, for the things she is doing she won't notice the difference between a 3ghz Intel and a 1ghz Athlon. She just isn't doing anything that requires a great deal of processing power. You could go with a cheaper Celeron solution, or a Sempron packaged deal. The most important thing really would be the motherboard and you could probably get away with an all-in-one integrated solution (video, sound, lan) like an NF2/3 board. As for RAM, find a stick that matches whatever CPU's Front Side Bus you chose and then get at least 256MB (512 being better). Look for "barebones" packages that will give you a motherboard, cpu, and ram combo. Usually those will give you a better deal than if you bought them seperately.

thanx for the suggestions,
I think I'll go with the EPOX EP-9NDA3J w/ Athlon 64 3000+ and 1 GIG of DDR400. All for about $340
this should be a screamer and keep her happy for a few years...
thanx again
:cool: