I personally don't think the 800 FSB gives enough of an advantage over a
266-533 FSB. Most of it is miniscule at best unless you are running
complete high end and that will set you back a couple grand. The prices
that they are wanting for P4 2.53ghz+ is just not worth the price of
admission. Especially, when a AMD Athlon 2600+ "2.083ghz" (333mhz)
benchmarks slightly better than a P4 2.53ghz (533mhz) without even being
overclocked. Hell, in most tests it will outperform a P4 2.8ghz (533mhz)
without being overclocked and on comparable set-ups. :-)

Also, 512mb ram is fine. Upgrading to 1 gig later isn't a bad idea, but
very few things even in the moderate future are going to really need
over 512mb to run properly. More ram is never bad, but too many people
are trying to pass it off as the new miracle drug when it's the same
importance it always has been.

As for the system being middle of the road. Yes, it is. I am not going
to spend $1500+ on a P4 3.2ghz with an Abit IC7-G mobo, 1gb Samsung
PC3200 DDR 400 Dual Channel Ram, and a ATI 9800 Pro Ultimate 256
sapphire vid card when they aren't worth it. It's far more economical
and IMO intelligent to upgrade when time calls for it and not because
it's the current trend. Everyone to their own ways though. If you've got
the expendable cash, then by all means show off for the neighbors.

With my car just costing me almost $500 to fix I only have about
$300-$350
to play with. With the overclocking potential of the AMD I definitely
will get more bang for my buck if the cpu starts getting weak, but if I
can run across a nice deal on a P4 and decent mobo that is comparable,
then I will go that way. I considered the Celeron for it's raw cpu
speed, but that 128k cache is just ass and my previous Celerons have
sucked. Except, the Celeron 300a which I had overclocked to 600mhz+. :-)

My current system is a P3 550mhz with 389mb Crucial PC133 ram, GeForce
256 (32mb) vid card, and Soundblaster Live Gamer. It plays everything I
like just fine now and that includes DAoC, Everquest, and I even beta
tested SWG on this rig. :-) SWG ran fine unless I turned on that gayass
radial fauna. A 2.0ghz+ machine with some goodies sounds pretty nice to
me.

Now move to NC and buy me a new computer, you rich pizzunk. :-p

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Bear "replicant" Powell

"Everything I like is either illegal, immoral, or 
 fattening." - Alexander Woollcott



-----Original Message-----
> From: ^_^x Kenshin-dono

ya, probably not a bad idea. although honestly im a little shocked your
not 
going a little bigger 512 ram is like the minimum these days, and
pentium 
is actually where its at right now with their 800mhz FSB chips. you'd
spend 
a little more of course but what you just listed off is a middle of the 
road machine right now, when those games come out it'll be min
requirments 
or lower probably. and you know how that works