S939 Upgrade advice needed

[mrbenn]

My current 3500+ is showing its age badly in vista, even with the 2gb of RAM installed, so have decided to go dual core.
However, I am on a budget and so want to take as smooth a path as possible, i.e stick with the socket 939 board (at least for now).
As i see it, my choices are as follows:

1: X2 3800+ (with view to overclocking?)
2: X2 4600+ (probably not much o'cing potential)
3: Opteron dual (clueless about the performance abilities of these)

Obviously a primary concern is comparative performance in Vista and compatibility with my existing mobo/ram setup

Any suggestions/advice would be very gratefully received

MrBenn

 

[mrbenn]

Performance wise, how do the Opterons stack up at stock clocking to the X2 chips? Having looked around, they seem to be a little hard to find, only ones i can see so far are 170 and 175 ones, recommended? (and will work ok with my AN8?)

 

[mrbenn]

Anyone any experience with the Asrock 4Core-Dual board? It would seem to be a halfway step towards a full new system, as I could use my existing RAM and gfx card. Obviously it is not the bees-knees of boards, but as a stepping stone towards C2D loveliness?

Edit:
Although it has only 2 SATA ports, and I have 4 SATA drives