Hi. I noticed a lot of threads like these come up and are answered well here.

I currently have a P4 3.2 ghz, and a x850 PE, 1gig RAM. I've had this setup close to 3 years and its performed very well without any upgrades since. Unfortunately, it is one of the notorious Prescott pentiums, and overheats all the time. I have a heatpipe cooler on there but it still overheats. I have a sh***y antec case. I'd like to address the overheating before it blows up. The reason I ended up with the prescott is because of upgrade staggering; it was the best socket 470 chip there was at the time.

I'm not a huge gamer these days, but I'd like to be able to reasonably play todays current games, and maybe Fallout 3 when it comes out (Oblivion runs great now) with minimal upgrades. Til then I don't really need any huge bit of performance, just average student computing.

My budget is $200 or less, but preferrably less. Is it possible to get a mobo/CPU that is >= what i currently have? I really don't know how my old setup compares with the budget mobo/cpu of today, so thats why i need your help. Also, an AGP slot would be nice so i could save the x850.

As an alternative, I considered spending money on a nice cooling system for now, and just start saving for a better rig.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Honestly I would save for a new system. Its not worth buying a new motherboard with AGP for that video card.

Is your 1 gig ram DDR or DDR2? Im guessing DDR.

It's possible to upgrade for <=200 but probably not worth it.

I think your options are basically:

1) AMD X2 on a socket 939 motherboard
As long as make sure its agp and not pci-e, you should be able to reuse everything. Probably easiest to find and will run you like ~$130.

2) Pentium D on a socket 775 motherboard
-775 motherboards that support agp and ddr are getting tough to find.
Those you will find will probably only support Pentium D - Think very similar to the processor you have now just times 2. Similar price to option 1.

I would continue saving until you have enough to purchase a new Core Duo motherboard, ram, cpu, and PCI-E card. DDR2 ram and PCI-E tends to cost less than DDR and AGP nowadays.

Save. Upgrading with an AGP slot is like buying a brand new car with the tires blown. Sure, it might get you down the street if you really want it to, but where will you be when you need a car in a couple months?

But I'd save about another 300. You could score a Conroe setup with 1gb of DDR2 at least and an 8800GT/3870, whichever floats your boat.

Cool thanks guys. Thats what I needed to know.

This man speaks truth.