How hard is it to swap my 600 AMD Slot A cpu for a AMD 950 Slot A cpu? Is it a matter of just shuting down (ground myself), take out one and install the other? Will I have to update anything? Will I lose any data on my hard drive? I know this is elementary, just wanted to be sure I do not do anything wrong. Thanks

At most you will have to update the BIOS for your motherboard. Otherwise its exactly as you described. If the system doesn't boot with the new CPU, swap with the old and hunt down a BIOS update.

Your data is perfectly safe through this.

Traves,
There are a couple of things to make sure of. There are 2 types of slot A AMD processors. The K7 (classic) which I'm pretty sure is what you have, and the A0 (Thunderbird) The numbers refer to the first few digits of the part #, which is located on the top edge of the processor. This makes which motherboard you have very important! Most early slot A boards don't support Thunderbirds. Some may with a bios update. Check your board's website to see which processors are supported. Now if your board supports both, you have a choice. Thunderbirds are generally considered to be a faster "slot A" out of the box. This is due to the 256kb L2 cache running at full clock speed. Even though classics have more L2 cache at 512kb, the cache runs at less than clock speed, which makes it somewhat slower. Overclocking is another matter I dont know about the tbird, but many people overclock the classic. The last thing to consider is the bios update. Some motherboards need a bios update to go past a certain speed processor. For example your board may only support up to 850mhz with its current bios, but be able to support 1ghz with the update. Bios updates are pretty simple and usually work well, but sometimes, they can cause more problems, than they fix. Just be sure to have your old bios version and flash utility ready to reinstall if you have problems. P.S. You can tell the speed by the numbers after K7 or A0 for example: K7950 would be 950mhz same with A0950. Good Luck!