Ok I'm thinking about upgrading my tower or just getting a new one..

Right now I got an Athlon 2500 (or something like that) on an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo.
2G of PC2700 DDR RAM
and a 100G Hard drive
2 DVD burners.. 1 dual layer

I'd really like to beef it up for some video crunching. What are my options? Would I be better suited to buy a complete new system with the dual core CPU's from Dell or something like that? Or get a barebones and add my Hard drive, DVD Burners and such?

I'm open to suggestions and would prefer NOT to build my own. Not saying I won't, just would prefer not to

BTW.. I dont' do any gaming.. not even minesweeper

Well, honestly? I would move to one of the Dual Core processors, or, if nothing else, something 64 bit. The b*tch part of this is, quite simply, most of your good AMD64 X2 boards are PCI-Express which means you would need to upgrade any PCI/AGP cards you have on your system. Cost is a factor to - to upgrade the current system, you're looking at less than $200 out the door. Going new and reusing parts can be done for less than $1,000 but obviously isn't very budget minded.

With 2GB of RAM already, the single most beneficial thing you could do in your case for the least money would be to buy the fastest CPU your board supports (AMD Barton Core 3200+ --- HERE (http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80180&affiliate=pricegrabber)) or pay a few bucks extra for some hardcore cooling and get something like the AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 333MHz FSB CPU which is incredibly overclockable (to 3200+ speeds easy, supposedly - but then Barton cores are wicked sick).

If you're thinking about going with an AMD64 system, to get into something sweet, you'll be needing to upgrade your RAM, and even if you go barebones, to get something really beefy, you're going to be dropping at least $800 from start to finish.

Do you think bumping up to the AMD Barton Core 3200+ will be a noticable difference in processing power from my 2500??

yes, to a degree. you're talking about almost a half a gigahertz bump up, a much better core to that CPU and added overclockability. in my opinion, your system bottleneck is your CPU. when you upgrade, your RAM will be the new bottleneck.

you won't add any kind of dual processing support which would be like adding nitrous to a vehicle, but you will see a 20 - 25% speed increase from the processing aspect of things at least. That's like having your truck go from 250HP to 320HP, respectively. You will notice it in some aspects, not in others.

Another thing to look at - what is the latency on your RAM?

The ram is Kingston 400MHz DDR PC3200. 2 1G sticks (I was wrong before)

I don't know how or what "Latency" is

The main aspect I'm looking for is increased speed in crunching down movies to fit on my PVP. Takes forever

While you are doing video crunching the processor is getting a good workout, but so is the storage. You may look there, depending on your I/O load?

Latency is usually listed as a series of numbers and is specific to your RAM modules. Latency is normally listed as a series of 3 or 4 numbers separated by dashes like 2-2-2 or 2-3-2-5 or 3-3-3-9 or something. You also may see CAS Latency or "CL" listed on the stick. if you are NOT overclocking, lower numbers are best. Larger numbers will give you some headroom to overclock your RAM, if I understand right. A prime stick of RAM would have a latency like 2-2-2.