I'm lookin to upgrade within the next coupla days. Both CPUs are pretty much the same price (~$10 CDN dif), which would offer best bang for the buck when o/ced? I'm using MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU mobo and may get an ABIT AT7 MAX2 with the CPU. I hear the abit board is good for o/cing. anyone else familiar with this board?
thanks guys

The barton has double L2 cache but my bet is that the tbred will oc enough beyond the barton as to overcome the slight performance advantage at equal mhz that the L2 cache produces.

Abit is great but the kt400 doesn't compare to the nforce2. If you are trying to save money you might get an epox 8rda, or if not that, the abit nf7-s.

Thanks johnoh, I'm not really lookin to save money.
The reason I like the AT7 MAX2 is because it has RAID onboard, SATA and best of all *no serial ports*. I'll look into the NF7 you suggested though.

lol tech guy. Are you allergic to serial ports?

I'd give my honest opinion of serial ports but I'm sure to be banned form the discussions ;)
But let's say I like them as much as I like Macs... and everyone I know knows how much *love* macs
:: rolling eyes ::

Actually johnoh, that nForce2 board looks really cool now that I'm readin up on it and I have a few questions for ya if thats ok...
In the box, how many Seriallel (sp?) connectors did you get for connecting IDE HDDs to the serial interface?
Second, what do you know about the problems with the first version of the NF7-S? In one review I read they mentioned something about hardware problems on the first version but could not find any information on it.
That should be it but hey, thanks for your suggestion (and I'll save myself $40) :D

Newer is almost always better. Not only will my Barton 2500+ run at speeds way in excess of the 3200+ stock speeds, the extra cache IS a lot faster in many apps. Gotta use an nForce2 Ultra 400 based board. My 2500+ smokes P4 systems costing 2 to 4 times the price, and this is no idle boast!

I don't know why people think older AMD chips overclock better than the new ones. It's totally false, and right up there with other equally ignorant ideas like "Pentiums run cooler than Athlons", "Pentiums are more reliable" and the ever popular "P4's are faster than Athlons". All of these are BS and I have the benchmarks and temp readings to prove it.

Consider this: A 2-stroke leaf-blower motor runs at twice the frequency (RPM's) of a 4-stroke 2000 Horsepower blown fuel dragster motor. Use both to power identical dragsters and see which one actually runs the faster 1/4 mile (the only reason to own a dragster).

That's right folks, INTERNAL CPU CLOCKS DOES NOT EQUAL COMPUTER SPEED, regardless of what the salesman at Best Buy or Circuit City may have told you!

I build systems for a living. When people ask me to build P4 systems, I ask them "Why do you prefer a slower more expensive computer to a faster and less expensive one?", and shortly after that I give them the answer to the question they have asked. It is a resounding "NO!" The reason is that I can't justify building a P4 based system is because, while they sometimes compete with the Athlon's in application performance, they never do it effectively with respect to cost.

Yes, in my opinion everybody who has purchased a P4 based system has been fed a bunch of crap. I will not participate in the Pentium 4 hoax!

Now THAT is an opinion.

tech guy the nf7-s rev 1.2 (like every other early nforce2 board) had some problems that are mostly cleared up in the nf7-s rev2.0 which are all you can buy right now.

No idea on your ide-serial ata connector question.

Still no idea what is bad about a serial port.

I just got a 2500+ and with the stock cooler it will do 2800+ no problem 30*C. I am pretty happy with it except that my overclocking results have been a bit bad...on an A7N8X not revision 2 I can't run anything over a 185 FSB stable....well the 2800+ levels are still plenty fast and that there is a $90 CPU running as fast as a $180 CPU...score one for overclocking.