Good day folks! I'm a reasonably avid gamer and, with the recent releases of game titles I'm thinking of upgrading. Current specs: Intel P4 Northwood 2.66GHz 533Mhz FSB (effective) 1 x 512mb DDR2700 (single channel) GeForce FX 5200 (I know, I know ;) ) MSI-7005 Motherboard. Initially I was just planning a GPU upgrade, as well as another stick of RAM, but with the event of pci-e a mainboard upgrade is definitely needed. I was thinking something along the lines of: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ 1Gb RAM (2*512mb ddr3200) Geforce 7900GT Then I heard about the upcoming release of the AM2 (is it AM2? might be M2 I forget) socket and figured I'd wait till then and get pretty much the same thing but with ddr2 etc. Then however I started wondering if the 4400+ was maybe overkill, or if a single core would be better in general and started thinking about the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ At which point I scratched my head and went: "Is a 3500+ really THAT much better than my P4?" Now this I can't answer. I've heard that games are much more limited by GPU than CPU but how low does that go? So the third option is keeping my current CPU, and upgrading my MB to one that supports socket 478, pci-e, and dual channel mode. Something like the Albatron PX915P4C Pro http://www.marnscda.com/review06_15_05.htm Getting the GeForce 7900GT and another 512 stick of ram (PC2700 to keep with the 1:1 bandwidth rule) and then having the opportunity to take the card and build something more along the lines of my original thought at a later stage. So to recap: (1) AM2 socket nvidia 4 chipset MB AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ (AM 2 socket) 1Gb RAM (2*512mb DDR2-800MHz) Geforce 7900GT (2) Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (socket 939) 1Gb RAM (2*512mb DDR2-800MHz) Geforce 7900GT (3) Albatron PX915P4C Pro Intel P4 2.66GHz (500MHz fsb) 2*512mb PC2700 Geforce 7900GT Where option 2 might be socket AM2 if possible. Thoughts people? Can the old P4 still pull it or should I give it it's end? Thank you very much if you've read this far! Jay

If I were you I would probably wait till AM2 release, just about 6 weeks ahead. Ya for your P4, let's put it an end till Conroe release. Probably you want 2gig of memory since Vista will be out Christmas or after... Pentium 4 3.6Ghz Prescott Asus P5WD2 Premium Corsair XMS 2Gig DDR2 667Mhz X700Pro 256MB GDDR3 WD Raptor 36.7GB WD 250GB 16MB SATA II Coolermaster 430Watt I don't have a case, yet I enjoy not having one

I agree wd dt.. Just wait till conroe release.. Go for Intel not AMD... Premium Quality not Detonating Chip.. Go for Nvidia=best SLi gfx card.. BAsed on experince before..i had an AMD Athlon XP..ooohhhh it burns and melted my mobo's capacitor near it..what a bad xperience..Hail Intel!!! AsRock P4I45Gv Intel Chipsets Celeron D 2.40 Ghz DDR400 Kingston 512mb ram 40GB HDD Western Digital Geforce FX 5500 256MB/128bit

I am an intel user, but I have admit that AMD has been eating Intel's market shares for the last couple years (now still). Conroe will be a big turning point for Intel. AM2 its about the same as the old AMD beside it supports DDR2 and improved their memory controller a bit so they can take advantage over DDR2. It all comes down to "how long are you willing to wait" Pentium 4 3.6Ghz Prescott Asus P5WD2 Premium Corsair XMS 2Gig DDR2 667Mhz X700Pro 256MB GDDR3 WD Raptor 36.7GB WD 250GB 16MB SATA II Coolermaster 430Watt I don't have a case, yet I enjoy not having one

Ok thank you people, The P4 is on it's last legs ;) But Yah, that is the problem, I really don't think I can wait till Q3 for the Conroe core. So I will probably be going with the AMD AM2 socket. Mainly in the hope of future upgradeability. Still not sure what CPU I'll be going with but I'll spend some time looking at benchmarks. Thanks! Jay