Computer upgrade.... it's been a while

[Lopez]

The time has finally come to upgrade my wheezing, struggling PC.

Current spec:

AMD Sempron 2800+ (1.6GHz)
1.25 GB DDR
Some ancient motherboard hauled out of a skip
Generic AGP card
Clunky old IDE HDDS

You get the picture.

I use it mainly for web browsing (70+ tabs open in Firefox is not uncommon which sucks a fair old bit of resource), editing pics in Photoshop, mild gaming (nothing cutting edge, got an XBOX so it's only the odd game really)
Playing music.

I mainly notice the lack of performance in the current setup when I have Media Player or VLC running while I'm also web browsing/using Photoshop - lots of stuttering and general poor performance.


SO


The time has come to upgrade I think, I've not rebuild the system for a good few years and hence am now totally out of touch!
I don't want to spend a fortune, there just isn't any point as I won't benefit much from it.

Been doing some digging and basically I'm looking at 2 routes

Sempron 140 (AM3)
Athlon 64 5200 or similar (AM2)

Guessing that as the Athlon is AM2 that it is older architecture, but the Sempron surely has significantly less processing power? But on the other hand I'd have thought it would be more future-proof.
Athlon costs almost double what the Sempron does (around £40 for the Athlon, more like £25 for the Sempron) - will I really notice the difference?

Motherboards are expensive these days aren't they? Anyway it seems I have 2 routes I can go down there, DDR2 or DDR3.
DDR3 RAM is more expensive it seems. Is it worth the extra cost?
AM2 boards more plentiful in the budget range than AM3 ones from what I've found but overall price differences relatively negligable.

I'll need to get a PCI-E graphics card too. Joy.

PSU? Can't remember what's in this thing, I seem to remember changing it a couple of years ago

Any comments welcome. It was all so much easier when you only had to choose between a Duron or an Athlon