Wait or play?

[RearAdmiral]

Here are my 2 options,
1)I can get the following:

1)Abit Ic7-Max3 or Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, Probably Abit, i hear Asus has voltage problems.
2)P4 2.8e or 3.2e, I hear the 2.8 is better for Oc'ing, which I plan on doing, any suggestions on best oc'ing processor would be great, hoping to hit 4ghz.
3)Geforce 6800 or x800xt, which ever is faster.
4)Corsair Twinx1024-4400 Ram(1 gig at DDR 550)
5)Waterchill-KT12A-L30, minus northbridge cooler if I go with Abit board, I believe they have a small fan on the northbridge.
6)Sound Blaster Audigy 2
7)Enermax power supply, around 600w
8)Burner, HDD,case, etc.

All this stuff basically costs less than $2,000
or do you think I should wait for the change to socket 775 and the D0 prescotts which I dont think are out. Im thinking if I wait, I will be paying 3,000+, I want to spend 2,000 or less. Any suggestions or comments would be great. I think if I can get the system up to or close to a stable 4Ghz, it will be plenty for me. Thanks

 

[Crashman]

Yes, I was terribly dissapointed in my P4C800-E Deluxe and got rid of it, due mostly to voltage issues. I have this Soyo P4I875P Version 1.0 Black Lable now, which is built like crap but works like a charm. The Soyo only supports 1.60v core max, but that should be more than enough for Prescott overclocking.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[RearAdmiral]

Do you think the Abit will have any problems with the corsair memory?

 

[Crashman]

No, I don't think the Abit board will have problems with that memory as long as you raise the voltage manually to the setting recommended by Corsair.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[RearAdmiral]

Sounds good, but I think im going to switch to the Athlon 64 3400+ instead, with an Abit or Asus Nforce 250 board. The water cooling will probably allow me to overclock it a bit more than the article down back in january. I think i might wait for socket 939 too. What memory do you think I should use? 3500, 4000?

 

[Crashman]

Hmm, to wait for 939 or not...anyway, nForce3 250 kicks now, 939 will just make it nicer for upgrades and so forth...

Anandtech says higher memory speeds help the A64, so PC4000 would be nice. However lower latencies also help the A64 more noticably than the P4. What I'd consider is the OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev. 2. Anandtech shows that this memory can be run at reduced latencies using slower speed, OR overclocked to PC4000 speed at stock latencies. It seems that such RAM would offer you a little more flexibility when finding the optimum performance of your CPU.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[RearAdmiral]

If I wait for Socket 939 I wont have to get registered memory correct? Or is it ECC? Cause the current memory needed for Athlon 64s is registered with ECC I believe.

 

[Crashman]

I'm fairly certain that registered memory is only required for the FX vesions of the A64, not the 2800+ thorugh 3400+ versions.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[jammydodger]

In order to reach 4Ghz with a 2.8 you will need PC4400..even then you are looking at only 3.85Ghz. This only applys if you want a 1:1 ratio for RAM and FSB.

Also I would get the northbridge cooler if I were you because you are gonna have to run high FSB's and those northbridges an get hot.

P4c 2.6@3.25
512Mb PC4000
2x120Gb 7200.7 in RAID0
Waterchill KT12-L30
Abit AI7
Radeon 9800Pro

 

[RearAdmiral]

What do you think about the Platinum editions of OCZ, do you think the platinum 3700 will be better than Gold Rev.2 3700?