P4 Rig...

[scj6771]

Ok I spoke a few months ago about purchasing a mobo, and after taking in all your good advice I have decided to go with the ASUS P4P800, this is one sweet board, what would you recommend for the processor? 3.0 or 3.2? Northwood or Prescott? what would be the best for a limited budget but still play Doom III with no lag what so ever???? Thanks.

[kram 2.0]

Great choice - I too have the P4P800 (DX version) and it's solid. For processor, be sure to get a Socket 478 (PGA478) processor, as much of what's in the market right now is LGA775. If you can find one, the best CPU to get for the P4P800 would be the Northwood 800FSB series - noted with a "C" after the advertised clockspeed. I'd say the Pentium 4 3.0C would be good if you find it.

Game performance is more dependent on the graphics card and particularily RAM with Doom 3. Make sure you get a gig of RAM and purchase a solid graphics card.

kram

[Cricket]

Yeah, grab the 3.0GHz Northwood P4 if you can. 478 pin Prescott P4s run pretty hot.

Like kram8806 said, gaming performance relies more on the video card than the processor. Get a Ati 9800 Pro if it fits into your budget.

:) Cricket

[lil Jimmie]

While my 2.8 Prescott has a slight performance edge and overclocks far better than my 2 other 2.8 Northwoods, I don't know that it is enough to offset the heat and power consumption trade off. But like Kram said the video and memory play a bigger role in game performance than the cpu.

BTW that is a good board I have 3 of them

[glc]

NOT cheap, but this is the best processor for that board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116164