I have been messing around linux (SuSE) for a few years. I am a compleat (look it up) novice. I have absolutely zero programming ability. GUI baby, that's me. Anyway, my first distro was SuSE 7.3 pro, then onto 8.0 pro. Once I felt a little comfortable, I did a FTP install of 9.0 and now 9.1 pro, and I really like it. Very GUI

Here is my question...would I experience better performance if I ran a Linux only box compared to a XP/Linux box. I'm on an old P3 (500mhz) with 384mb and a pair of 80gb drives, onboard graphics (nvidia I think) and sound.

If I was to upgrade to a Athlon 2800+ with a real graphic card, would I still notice any difference between dual vs single boot?

There should be no noticeable difference between dualboot and single.

You could eliminate even a tiny difference ( if any ) by using separate hard disks.

i'm a bit confused about your post...

if you are asking if linux/windows will run faster on a athlon 2800+ v.s. a p3 500 that's a bit of a no brainer of coarse it would be faster

whether you are running dual boot or single boot the performance should be the same.

I guess I'll just plunk down the $$ on a upgrade. I imagine that would give me the greatest improvement.

I see my error...that wasn't the best worded question ever.

I meant would there be a performance difference between a dual boot vs single boot on a faster machine, not would it be faster on a better machine.