I have a Gateway 831GM <specs> and I was wondering if I can overclock the CPU if I replace the CPU on it now, which is a 3.0GHz, or would I have to get a new motherboard?

And on another note, I am trying to encode movies and stuff into HD Quality and it seems to take forever to complete.  A 328 MB TV show takes 5hr and 24 minutes to complete.  I am looking at a new pentium d processor but i dont know which speed will be sufficient enough to complete these tasks.  Could someone give me a recommendation on which Processor speed to look for?

Thanks for the tip and I will be looking into that.  I have changed my mind about overclocking a pentium D 805 thanks to you .  I think changing the motherboard would be pretty frustrating anyways.

Does the HS/F that comes with the CPU provide enough cooling for it to multitask or will I have to buy a better HS/F?  and would I be able to get someone to install the CPU onto my computer, like Geek Squad, because I'm a little weary about installing new parts due to a lack of space?

But interesting post, nonetheless.  Didn't even know about Core 2 Duo!

So I would have to update my Motherboard anyways to get a Core 2 Duo onto my system right?
I currently have an Intel D915GAG Mobo with Intel Chipset i915/i915G

same with me but I don't think any Motherboard offers 184-pin(i think that's what it is) DDR2 3200 slots.  See I recently bought 2 GB of Corsair XMS memory, so it doesn't look too promising

that sucks.  I guess I'm going to stick with P4 w/HT then.  What processor speed is sufficient for HD Encoding on a P4 w/HT?

This is my motherboard: http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/ag/ag_proc.htm

I don't think I will be stuck at 3.0GHz if what it says in the link is correct.  It says the high supported processor is 670 @ 3.8GHz.

But I will look at the link you gave me.  (I'm sorry for taking so much of your time, but put it this way, you saved me from upgrading my cpu to a pentium d :p)

I'll just give you my CPU-Z stats...
----------------------
  CPU-Z version 1.24.0
----------------------

CPUID Output
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of CPUs         2 (1 Physical)

CPU #1
APIC ID            0
Name            Intel Pentium 4
Code name         Prescott
Specification         Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
Family/Model/Stepping      F43
Extended Family/Model      0/0
Package            LGA775
Technology         0.09µ
Instructions Sets      MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, x86-64
Clock Speed         3000.0 MHz
Clock multiplier      x15.0
Front Side Bus Frequency   200.0 MHz
Bus Speed         800.0 MHz
L1 Data Cache         16 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L1 Trace Cache         12 Kµops, 8-way set associative
L2 Cache         2048 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Speed         3000.0 MHz (Full)
L2 Location         On Chip
L2 Data Prefetch Logic      yes
L2 Bus Width         256 bits

I have a bios option when I restart my computer but is there a way to get it through C:/windows?