P4 DDR or AthlonXP DDR?

[giocopiano]

I've got a fair quantity of DDR already I can use for a new motherboard. RDRAM out of the question as the board premium and memory will add about $150, I don't need the performance that badly.
I was thinking of going with the P4 Northwood 1.6A oc to 2.1 setup but I can save money by buying an Athlon XP, ECSK7S6A and using my current flash CPU cooler. I'll probably overclock that too.
So:
-Does the P4 performance feel variable, making the XP a safer bet? It mainly only does better than the XP on SSE2 beta version programs. For instance, sims and floating-point work show it up. P4 bitchslapped in IL-2 and CFS2.
-Is the P4 really worth bothering with on the compromised DDR platform- in some esoteric tests RDRAM does much better, does that difference show in games though?
I'm a little concerned with heat also and wondering if the new Athlons by summer will have improved that situation, would it even be worth waiting if I can hold on at 1 GHz?

Thanks for any responses, the P4 is a bit of a lop-sided chip which makes me hesitate...

 

[ScrapSilicon]

<< hold on at 1 GHz >>

sounds reasonable,if you hang loose...in a hurry...grab the ECS

 

[MadRat]

The XP2000+ (stock - not O/C'd) system stood up to the performance of the Pentium 4's at 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz in the latest Aceshardware review of P4's. The price for the XP1700+ is looking pretty economical for the level of performance one could expect.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< Is the P4 really worth bothering with on the compromised DDR platform- in some esoteric tests RDRAM does much better, does that difference show in games though? >>

RDRAM does do better when clocking Northwoods >= 2.6 GHZ. That's the speed zone where DRAM seems to really pull ahead. If you don't plan to run that P4 at those speeds DDR is perfectly fine.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< Does the P4 performance feel variable, making the XP a safer bet? It mainly only does better than the XP on SSE2 beta version programs. For instance, sims and floating-point work show it up. P4 bitchslapped in IL-2 and CFS2. >>

Interesting benches but some of them seem whacked. Look at Falcon 4 at 1600x1200...the AMD benches are pathetic (9 fps?!). The CFS 2 benches are similar...at 1600x1200 the AMD numbers drop way down again. If those are accurate, and it's not due to some obscure video issue, I would say AMD is far more variable than Intel.

And just what is an "Intel 845 B G"?

I dunno it seems to me most games are bottlenecked by the video card so AMD = Intel. Flip a coin and get a GF4.