CPU or Memory?

Hmm, my theory on memory is you get what you pay for. Generally cheap memory has craptacular timings, doesn't overclock well, and is well... cheap.

Get some decent corsair, geil, mushkin!, kingston, etc.

The 3.0c overclocks pretty well on air, I would suggest getting pc3700 if you are going to overclock, better to give yourself a bit of headway.


Shadus

Yeah, sorry, should've mentioned. Buying the MSI 865PE NEO2-LS MB.

I intend to get 2 sticks of whatever memory (2 x 256mb).

If I get the good PC3700 (Corsair XMS) then do I need to get the P43c? Won't the P42.8c or even P42.6c clock just as high as the 3c?

That would be generally true if you could unlock your multiplier. As far as I know you still can't on Intel though. That means that you can only OC using the FSB. In theory you could up the FSB in small amounts and hopefully hit about the same MHz at the end, but the 2.8 and more so the 2.6 will have lower multipliers which means that you'll need a higher FSB to get there before you hit the clockspeed limit of the CPU. (And the higher the FSB the better the performance.)

But also the higher the FSB the harder it is on the memory. That is unless you're not doing a 1:1 timing between the memory and FSB, but then you're looking at worse performance again because the P4 gets choked for data in a lot of applications whenever it doesn't have enough memory bandwidth.

I suppose one of the important questions really is are you wanting absolute performance of the whole system or just a high clock on your CPU to brag about?

<pre><b><font color=red>I've always wondered why people liken the taste of blood to copper.
It tastes much more like iron to me.
<- - - - - -></font color=red></b></pre><p>

Enjoy and good luck. The best part is that at the absolute worst it'll still be top-notch performance.

<pre><b><font color=red>I've always wondered why people liken the taste of blood to copper.
It tastes much more like iron to me.
<- - - - - -></font color=red></b></pre><p>