W asks, "I'm on a REALLY tight budget and I simply don't have the money to build a high end gaming computer. My current computer, a Pentium 4, is really showing its age, and I can hardly get anything installed, let alone actually play games on it. Could you recommend a sub-$100 processor that I could play some more recent games on?"

The sub-$100 processor market isn't actually as bad as you might think. While the products generally aren't as fast or responsive as the high end products, they'll do their jobs - and they'll do it a lot better than your P4.

On the other hand, you won't actually be sacrificing all that much performance. If you're willing to go as high as $99, then the AMD Phenom X4 9600 Quad Core Processor is right for you. At $99.99, it's a steal. It's not a high end Phenom II, or a Core i7, but it has more than enough computer power for todays games and applications.

If you want something that can be upgraded over the next five years, then you can get a Phenom II, but you'll sacrifice two cores to get that ability to upgrade. At $94.99 the AMD Phenom II X2 545 Dual Core Processor also has more than enough processing power for todays computing environment, but you'll probably end up upgrading it before you build a new computer. In fact, I highly recommend this sub-$100 processor simply because it's an AM3 processor, which will let you take the AMD upgrade path for quite some time.

There are other sub-$100 processor out there, but they don't come highly recommended. Just remember that if you choose a processor other than the Phenom II I listed, you're going to have a hard time upgrading that computer in the future. While the close to $100 price tag might strain your budget a bit, the ability to upgrade in the future is well worth it.

If you have a question send it to: lordkat@gmail.com

Be safe,
Jason