Webuser Forums: Really Confused about Upgrading to a 64 bit processor

Hi, I will have a bit of spare cash soon & was possibly considering upgrading to a AMD 64bit processor. Currently I have a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with HT. This was my first decent machine I bought from PC world a few years back & was the best one at the time.
However I am getting a bit frustrated with it of late as it seems to be very sluggish. I have upped the RAM previously to 1GB but to be honest I really didn't notice that much difference. Everything else has been swapped & changed so much there's only really the processor & graphics card left. I'm not a gamer at all so not too concerned about the latter. I do burn a lot of dvd/cd & whilst doing this my machine has no response to other programmes. sending it to the tray & opening a browser is a big no no. Which leaves me sat twiddling my thumbs until the disc is done.

Would upgrading my processor give me the performance I need? I presumed 1GB of ram to be quite adequate.

I am becoming quite interested in the 64bit AMD, but to be honest I know nothing about the ratings. All the names have changed & some of these AMD chips are only rated at 2.0GHz
I do recall however that the 2 companies use a different rating system.
Is the Athlon still the better chip (the pentium was when i got one) most of the ones I've seen are sempron.

I'm really confused now!?!
For example if I have a Pentium 4 2.8GHz HT what would be the AMD 64 equivalent be say 3.0GHz - 3.5GHz and what kind of cash am I looking at?

Does any of this make any sense?

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