Computer Advice needed

[Park Kraken]

Old system:
3.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4 Celeron Processor Single Core
512 MB RAM
GeForce 5500FX Graphics Card

Will a new system like this one have at least comparable or better performance than the old one?:
1.4 GHz Dual Core Processor (Intel or other)
1 Gig Corsair RAM
Graphics card? Something with as great performance as 5500, but with shading supported.

And I do have a budget of about 300$, which is why I'm looking hard at either a barebones system or a homebuilt computer.

So, advice?

[Morgan Evanar]

You need to save up for a new PC period, since nothing will carry over. Double your budget and go from there and get something worth the money.

[Park Kraken]

Well, my birthday was yesterday, but we're celebrating it today. One of things I'm doing is using newegg.com to buy the parts to assemble a new computer. What I'm looking at right now is something reasonably priced, and has an ADM Athlon X2 6000+ 3.0 GHz 64-pin processor, with accompanying motherboard, about 2 GiGs of Corsair RAM, a GeForce 8600GT 256MB Video card, plus the SATA Hard drive, CD/DVD combo drive, Power supply, case, etc., and it should run me about 500-750$ or so, depending on what deals we get.

[Morgan Evanar]

Get a 8600 GTS and not a 8600 GT if you can.

Let me go over the final list before you pull the trigger, it will probably keep you from doing something you'd regret a little. :)