AMD or Intel ?

[Ronnie]

you can get a

core 2 e6300 for ~180

this gigabyte motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128015
for ~90

thats less then 300 right there and it will own any amd out there pretty much

 

[Lord AnthraX]

Get the E6400 for the 8X multi so you don't need to go above 500 FSB to hit 3.5 GHz

 

[Ronnie]

^but hasnt it been proven that the 6300 and 6400 have the same oc limitation? i remember hearing something about that before

 

[Apokalipse]

are you getting new RAM and a new video card?

if so, then the Core 2 Duo would be the better option. DDR2 and PCI-E cards are cheaper than AGP cards and DDR1 RAM.

if not, socket 939 still supports DDR1, and AGP. since you have a Pentium 4 2.4, that would mean you still have DDR1, and most likely an AGP card (unless it is an onboard GPU)