All other things being equal (or equal as possible!), will I notice an improvement between my "old" AMD Athlon 2100 (1.75 GHZ) over a new Intel® Celeron® D Processor 330 (2.66GHz, 533fsb, 256k cache)?

regards

steve

Maybe a little, but not much.

I beg to differ.....I say you will notice a BIG difference with the new Celeron "D" CPU. I build PC's for friends and family often and usually buy AMD XP CPU's for the sake of cost. I recently put together a Celeron D 2.4Ghz for myself. Its faster than any XP I've put together (up to 2600+ I think) The 2.6 Ghz Celeron will be considerably faster than your old 1.7Ghz AMD XP.

Like you, I wanted to upgrade from an old XP 2100+ "Palomino" chip to
something faster. I got an Athlon XP-M 2400+ chip for $80 U.S. and I
am delighted! All the Internet articles are TRUE: The XP-M chips (M
denoting "mobile", meant for laptops, but still Socket-A and drops into
desktop mainboards as well) are "unlocked" regarding front-end bus or
CPU "multiplier"! My old Biostar mainboard BIOS "lied" to me about
adjusting the "multiplier" (in fact it would not!), so I had to get an Asus
A7V600-X mainboard which does allow this. With the Asus, I can run
the XP-M 2400+ at 133 MHz times 16.5, 166 MHz times 13, and 200
MHz times 11, all equal to 2.2 GHz (same as the best XP 3200+) and
all with only my old standard AMD heatsink/fan! The Asus mainboard
can also run your memory at a different rate, so you can keep your old
DDR266 memory with the CPU at 200 MHz x 11, thus saving money!
Get an XP-M 2400+ chip, before AMD discontinues them too!