overclocking / maximizing

[Xamublack]

This is my first time posting so thanks and sorry for potentially not choosing the correct forum, as I've found they are very concise.

What I'm interested in is not necessarily overclocking but optimizing an entire system for gaming purposes, i.e., what takes precedence cost wise (although overclocking is my next step).

Since I am only of average experience and cost is a factor I had originally considered something similar to:

-P4 3.0
-2 drive SATA for mirroring purposes (should I opt for raid 5 for a bit more speed, I'd heard you need at least 3 drives for that?)
-1GB Ram
-Radeon 9800 PRO

The reason I haven't mentioned a MB or chipset and have opted for spending a third of my resources on a card is my knowledge is limited in that area and I'm not sure just how much a board outweighs a better raid / specific type of ram etc.

For reference I'm more interested in games along the lines of EQ2 with heavy particle/lighting.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[scottchen]

For gaming I highly recommend the Athlon64 series, slightly overclocked Athlon64 gives significant boost in performance in games.

Here's what I would recommend:
AMD Athlon64 3200+ 2.0Ghz 1mb L2 cache
Gigabyte GAK8NS Pro
2x512 PC3200 samsung ram
Seagate SATA harddrives are very nice, and gets my recommendation.
ATI X800Pro

The X800Pro is quite expensive but offering more than 2x performance of 9800pro, i think it's worth it.

With stockcooling you'll get the Athlon64 to the neighbourhood of 2300mhz, that's equivalent to a 3600+, if you get some heatspreader for the samsung ram, you may be able to use 3-4-4-8 timings, and get it to run at 230mhz.

<A HREF="http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/myrig.php?do=view&id=17301" target="_new">My PC</A>

 

[ChipDeath]

He'll probably need a voltage bump on the RAM too. 230 is quite a bit of an increase there.

BTW, I've just received the Samsung 957MB you recommended. I'll see what it's like tonight... My sony seems to have suddenly started playing up (It kinda clicks on/off ocassionally - not off for any length of time, just like a loose cable or something...) in the last week or so, so looks like I might have got the timing perfect there

---
Epox 8RDA+ rev1.1 w/ Custom NB HS
XP1700+ @205x11 (~2.26Ghz), 1.575Vcore
2x256Mb Corsair PC3200LL 2-2-2-4
Sapphire 9800Pro 420/744

 

[scottchen]

Samsung ram loves voltage, i've had a PC2700 samsung do 231 on a nforce 2 platform, running at 2.8V with heatspreaders.

<A HREF="http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/myrig.php?do=view&id=17301" target="_new">My PC</A>

 

[ChipDeath]

2700 @ 231? That's not bad at all. I had some Crucial PC2100 that would do 175 (albeit Cas 3) with no voltage increase or other mods - which I thought was quite impressive.

---
Epox 8RDA+ rev1.1 w/ Custom NB HS
XP1700+ @205x11 (~2.26Ghz), 1.575Vcore
2x256Mb Corsair PC3200LL 2-2-2-4
Sapphire 9800Pro 420/744