best/fastest CPU for my board (I925XE)?

I'm in the middle of an 'upgrade on the cheap' cycle, to go from what has been a relativly low-end PC for a while now to something a bit more middle of the road, for less than £100.

So here's my spec at the moment

ECS PF21 Extreme Mainboard, with Intel 925XE & ICH6R chipset
Intel P4 530 Prescott 3ghz (800fsb, 2mb cache)
2.5gb DDR2 ram
Radeon X800 256mb
Auzen X-Plosion
<some optical + hard drives that are not important for this question>

So far i'm replacing that ageing X800 with a 7800GTX, which has cost me £45 from these here forums. That should hopefully give my PC a kick up the arse when it comes to playing games (BF2/WoW/TF2/C&C3 and SupCom are all I play atm), but my next concern is the CPU..as that may well end up being the next limiting factor.

So i'm looking to see what I can replace that with next, and if its even worth doing..

I expect a Core2 is out of the question due to the motherboard - if I have done my research right it won't support those, so what am I left with?

Anyone got any advice on what the best CPU I can put in that board? I will get round to upgrading to a core2 eventually but its going to be ~6months before I have a spare £200 for a new board + CPU, so looking for a cheapish upgrade for now :)


Any advice greatly appreciated

unless you can find an extreme edition p4 I don't think you will really get a worthy upgrade, I would Wait.

it would prbably be more cost effective to upgrade to a E21xx and a cheap p35 board you could get the pair for less than &#163;100