Not a bad system actually especially coming from a Sempron 3400+. Not to be an Intel fanboy or anything as I always favored AMD for 10yrs straight. But, I would have gone the Intel route as far as the upgrade.
Yah man, I hope they bounce back eventually. My first system was also a AMD K6-2. It was a 500mhz cpu. Because of AMD is what pushed Intel to where they are at now with the Core 2 cpus.