Recommendations for a P4 LAN gaming rig?

[Satyrist]

Hello,

With the tax refund I'll be getting this year, I'm looking to upgrade my current gaming rig:

AthlonXP1800+
ECS K7S5A rv3
GeForce3 Ti200
512MB Crucial CL2 SDRAM
TurtleBeach SantaCruz sound
Onboard 10/100 LAN
WD 60GB 7200 RPM 2MB HDD
Liteon 24x burner
3.5" rheobus
Chieftec clone of the antec sx600 case
350W Antec PS, 3 Panaflo H1A case fans connected to rheobus.

This one will be an Intel box, just seems a much more secure retention mechanism for the cpu, and the fact (I believe) that it will run cooler than the AMD will; I'll be looking to overclock, even if only moderately.

I know the big changes will be for the motherboard, cpu, and memory; What are decent choices that would be open to me for a good upgrade in this regard?

I am a bit new to the new northwood cpu's, I've been mostly running PIII and only a couple of Athlon XP-class boards in the past, I know that NForce2 offers dual-channel DDR memory support (even if the performance boost is marginal currently), is there similar support on the PIV side as well, and is it even worth considering?

Thanks for any advice on this.

 

[floccus]

The P4 would def. have a better gaming response than the Athlon due to the pipeline architecture. I'll let others who specialize on Intel to give you ideas about boards and cpu's to mate, but you'll definitely want to upgrade that GeForce3. Radeon 9700 Pro's are still better than the GeForceFX and are dropping in price so get one of them. Definitely get one of the WD Cavair Special Edition drives, the 8mb cache will help you out . The TBSC is still good. Might want to add another 512mb stick, even w/o dual channel more ram is always better. The PSU might suffice, but I'd say get a newer one just to give yourself some growing room.

This might seem odd, but I would also say get a nice NIC instead of the integrated controller. They'll run slightly faster and in LAN gaming that can make a difference, even if it is a slight one.

 

[Satyrist]

Anyone have any suggestions on the motherboard?

I have been looking at the newer offerings from Gigabyte and Albatron, do either of these sound good?

I'll probably be looking at getting a 2.4 b or c stepping northwood; Ought either of the aforementioned boards handle a decent overclock?

I'll likely be looking to get a Sparkle 400w power supply, load ratings appear to be higher than it's rated specs say.

A radeon 9700 pro is likely what I'll be looking at, I may wait for until the 9800's are in wider release, hopefully then the older generation card's prices should go down a bit.