When the Pentium IV first came out on the market, the first thing I thought is that I'd never upgrade to one. But I found myself buying one just 2 months ago and haven't regretted it. Why??

When they first came out they only supported RamBus memory. It was over-priced and didn't perform as well as everyone expected. Recently however, there has been a flood of new motherboards that make it more affordable.

I used to have a Pentium III and had 768Mb of memory for it. Then I saw a review of a motherboard that supported the memory. It was only marginally slower than the DDR based boards so I went for it.

It has made a big difference to the overall performance of the machine and I am quite happy. Now if only I could get a new video card.....

If you have a fast Pentium III (>1Ghz) then it probably won't make a big difference unless you go for a top of the range CPU. If you are using an older slower processor (800Mhz or less) then even an upgrade to a 1.6Ghz processor can make a difference (My machine is running around 400% faster since upgrading)

A word of advice however. Unless you are running Windows XP, be prepared to have to re-install your operating system.

Price below is for a 1.6Ghz processor and is correct at time of writing