if you want to say make a massive map in the crysis editor for example most extremely large ass levels will need atleast 6gb of ram. also things like google earth use high amounts of ram as well. the most i have ever used on my old server was 12gb of ram. servers use a lot but for the most part the max you would need to have a great pc is 4-6 anything over 6 for regular gaming and average desktop people is just stupid not to mention the strain it puts on the northbridge.

i would say if this dude has 533, 667, or 800 mhz ram then he should trade it all in for 4gb of ddr2 1066-1200 ram that will be plenty for anything

get an am2+ board and a phenom 9850 Black Edition i have one with a q6600 setup right next to it and they perform about the same the q6600 pulls ahead in some thigns but not by a lot the margin is really small.

the phenom 9550 is also really good as well i got my cousin one and overclocked it up to 3ghz and it performs very similiar to my 9850. and even at the stock speed the phenom 9550 will blow away your amd X2 don't switch to intel if you don't have to. phenom has it's advantages and disadvantages. i have both intel and amd and i use both of them all day and i caqn't tell the difference between a q6600 @ 3.6ghz and a phenom 9850 @ 3ghz while gaming even at stock speeds you can't really tell the difference it is like 1-2fps different.

or if your budget is tight just pick up a amd 6400+ that is a good bump from your current cpu as well and for 160-180$ it is great and will last a long time it plays everything from crysis to supcom very very well. as long as your graphics are good you will not notice the difference from most of the high end cpus while gaming