Need some direction

I have already decided to go intel over amd. I am an avid gamer and am looking at a Pentium 4 2.4BGHz 512K 533MHz CPU Northwood P478 Processor Retail Box. So if any of you have had any experience with this or know any problems I would be grateful. I am a total noob when it comes to bench marks so they dont help me, thanks for any help.

You could save $60 by overclocking a 1.8A to 2.4B speed, but then again, the 2.4B is likely to clock even higher still. I suggest a good board. The 648 seems to be the most powerfull chipset, but the only solid board with it is the Gigabyte GA-8SG667. Then there's the i845PE chipset, the slightest bit lower in performance but with great overclockability and the ability to support Hyperthreading, should you wish to upgrade later to a HT enabled CPU. Of course, you could choose a Granit Bay chipset board, which is even less efficient at standard clock speeds but scales upwards better.

If you want to wait another month, the SiS 655 chipset boards with HT enabled will be available, and will probably be the fastest P4 solution yet. No word on whether or not it will support the future 800MHz bus of the Prescott, but SiS is working on it, and none of the current boards support it, so that would be a bonus.

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