u can get some real cheap high-end systems now. in the UK anyway its a great time to buy, i only wish i had the money to do so, although im quite happy already with my athlon. for winxp u will need AT LEAST 256 ram. the DDR is faster, but u probably wont notice the difference (although u can still get cheap deals with a DDR motherboard, etc). should be fine for even games like goldeneye which require a high system spec. although by the time pj64 comes out hopefully the spec barrier will go down a bit, considering gmaes like perfect dark and goldeneye seem to require a 1.2ghz athlon for good performance.