How would an overclocked P4 641 Cedar Mill 3.2 gig overclocked to 4.125 gig compare with Dual core E 2180 overall. I mainly use this rig for re-encoding dvd to divix, web browsing and some light gaming. I plan on going from 1 gig to 2 gig of Ram and adding a better gpu. From 8600gt to 9600gt. How well will the P4 perform with the added ram and gpu.

It seems you'd get better overclocking room with the E2180, much better. Not to mention it is dual core, which would help a lot for using encoding. I wouldn't suggest the upgrade, but considering that you want to upgrade everything else, and do "light gaming" it seems to be an overall good idea to upgrade that too. What sort of motherboard do you have? Depending on it, it might seem viable just to build a whole new rig, with a MB included.

Yeah, definetly. If you are spending that kind of money, go for the motherboard/cpu upgrade as well.

It's just the ECS 945GCT-HM board that came with the rig. I flashed the bios with ISRT 945GCT-M (V1.0) bois to get the oc options which wasn't alot but enough to get my P4 to 4.125 gig and my ddr2 533 ram running at ddr2 687.

if you are willing to OC the e2180, its an absolute dead cert huge upgrade - if not, it will still probably beat the p4 into the ground

At minimum, I read that the e2000 series does double the instructions per clock cycle of the earlier dual core series--e.g., a 1.6 GHz 2140 is the equivalent of a 3.2 GHz. I wish I had the link for that, but I do not. Combine that with the ability of the e2000s to easily go over 3 GHz, and that they now range from $60-80, this is a no-brainer upgrade if your MoBo can handle it. (look for the Tom's article on the e2000 series legendary OC ability). Good luck!

thanks for the advice.

How are your temps? Those P4s are very power hungry.