[Wylug-discuss] New motherboard and processor - recommendations?

[Rob Hall]

Mrs. Christmas has said that I can get a new motherboard, processor and
graphics card - I just have to buy my own present. Woo hoo! Play time!!

I'm currently running a AMD XP3000+ on some ABit mobo with an ATI Radeon
(9100 I think) and a gig and a half of RAM. I use it as a desktop
machine which is also a fileserver for our home network. I'm running
Ubuntu with all the graphical bells and whistles turned on that I can
with this card. I'm thinking of moving over to Debian soon though as I
am currently running that at work and I love it! I don't play any really
demanding games but I do love music (multi-track recording and playing
my albums) - I've got an external Audigy 2 but not all the features work
sadly :(

I'm thinking of going over to a dual core intel of some kind unless
advised otherwise. I want speed and more eye candy - I spend long enough
with the command line at work so I might as well really enjoy home
computing!

Any recommendations or ones to avoid like the plague? I'd also happily
take advise over a new sound card.

Rob Hall