Hello, I am in the middle of building my third PC and I am wondering what P4 I should buy price/performance wise? I have a SOYO Ultra Dragon P4X400 Ultra Platinum Edition. I also have an Albatron Medusa GeForce 4 ti4600. I am not sure how much RAM I am going to buy yet. My big question is which size CPU should I go with. I was thinking a P4 2.6ghz with 800fsb the HT edition. I wanted to know will I notice a big difference with that vs. a P4 2.2 or 2.4 with a 533fsb? Or should I save the money and go for the smaller P4? I do a lot of gaming, but I dont have to have the top of the line. Should I just go ahead with the smaller cheaper P4? Or the bigger one? I know that this will end up being my decision, but I wanted to know what other people think no this subject. Thanks a lot!!

http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/soyop4x400/soyo7.php This board looks really good, but ... accordingly to Tweaknews review, it is not good in OC. It limits to 533 FSB, so you cannot use 2.6C processor.

Thanks for the reply, but that was not quite what I was going to do with this board. I do not plan on OC the processor, because of stability issues. I just wanted to know price/performance issues that you might know. Is the P4 2.8 800fsb HT worth the money or should I go lower to a 2.4 or a 2.6 or so with just a 533fsb?

Athlon XP all the way!!!

Your board does not support 800 Mhz FSB, so the highest you could go is the 3.06 HT with 533 FSB. The 3.06 will reach 3.5 ghz if your board is good with OC. Did you read the review I directed you to? You have to do some reading yourself, Or, You will be reading response like #3, which does not really answer the question. They go XP all the way, but don't buy AMD stock.

OK, now I understand!! For the longest time I thought that HT was only 800mhz FSB. I didn't know that HT was also 533fsb. I kept seeing that my board supported HT and I thought that it supported all of them, even the 800mhz. Glad I did not buy the 2.8 HT 800mhz fsb or I would have bought something for nothing. By the way, I did read that article even before you showed it to me...but thanks anyway! Well now with me completely understanding, which one would you buy. Remember I really want to know if I will see a great difference if I get, lets say a 2.8 533mhz compard to a 2.2 400mhz? Should I go lower to save the money or spend the extra money for the 2.8 533? Whats your opinion? And again thank you very much for clearing the Hyper Threading FSB up for me. The last system I built was the origional P4 socket 423 1.7, which I was extremely mad with having to go rambus.

All dependent on what you use the computer for .... games ... video editing ... or simply for office apps or real engineering work, i.e. 3D auto cad with large data files. 2.8 533 does not have HT provision. You have to go 3.06 for HT. There is much large memory band benefit from 533 than 400, if you don't overclock (400mhz FSB P4 is very desirable in overclocking - I have one that is running over 1.3Ghz over default) If you MUST keep your current board I'd go for the cheapest P4. Simply put, it is not worth to spend money on processor if you are not willing to switch to a more versatile board. $120 for P4 2A; $180 for 2.8B 533mhz; or $165 for P4 2.4C HT 800 Mhz, my money will for the 2.4C and a new board.