I have a GA-K8NF-9 (nForce4-4X chipset) Gigabyte mb currently containing an AMD Athlon 3500 processor running at 2Ghz (and a sidebar here, why, on bootup ,does the BIOS always report this clock speed as 2Mhz?) The board has 2 Gb of RAM (Dual channel as I recall). I have never attempted a processor upgrade before, however Scan UK confirm that I can upgrade this processor to:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 + Socket 939, Toledo Core, 2x 2.2GHz, 1MB Cache, OEM
@ £58.62 inc VAT
A couple of questions.
Do the limitations of a 3-year old mb make this upgrade only marginally effective or even pointless?
What tweaks to the BIOS may be required? - I note that the dual cpu is described as clocked at 2.2 Ghz.
Is there a coolling issue with this upgrade?, in which case what's the simplest way to address it?
Any relevant suggestions appreciated.

Well you can upgrade it but those processors are HOT in games.I have a 4200+ AM2 and it turns my pc of in games and gets up to over 70C WITH a bedroom fan helping move the air.so you might want the best cooler you could get.Well it would'nt be cost efective though as AMD is releasing the phenom processors in august making all thair X2 prices drop a reasonable amount.Amd doesnt even make 939 X2 processors anymore. Those are leftovers.Also you can only get DDR ram while not its DDR2 and they already have DDR3.Final thoughts Cost effective no , Effective yes but not for a long time.

,Amd

Thanks! - although I'm a bit confused. As I understand it this processor type will drop in price (assuming that there are some left) when new models are released? Are the new models compatible with the sockets etc on my board? I assume not.
BTW I don't run games at all. My main requirement for upgrade would be to improve the performance generally - particularly Photoshop (nb. I already have a dedicated SATA scratch disk for PS) - and to stretch out the life of the box generally.
Would you say this cpu would offer a noticeable improvement?

Its ok as long as you arent playing any graphic games or more than Two movies at once.The new ones will either be AM2 (i hope) or AM3.It will speed you pc up for sure. It will be probaby twice as fast with the Two cores at 2.2Ghz instead of one at 2GHZ