CPU for new System

[Ahoorg]

hi guys im not entirely sure what im trying to get in a new pc..im looking mostly for game

and media preformance..video encoding etc,here's what i have so far..any changes or upgrades

or help would be appreciated: i want to play doom3, unreal 2004, half life 2

hmmm AMD Athlon 64 3200 or Pentium 4 3.2C 800fsb

Antec TRUE430 430 Watt ATX12V Dual fan or enermax

*either ABIT IC7-MAX3
ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe Intel 875P
Gigabyte 8i875
or your suggestion
dont plan on going past 3.4C so prescott is not a concern

Pioneer DVR 107 8XDVDR or PLextor 8X DVDR

SB Audigy2 ZS 7.1 or M-Audio revolution

Ati Radeon 9800XT or plan for doom3 with nVidias highest GPU?

now for RAM. DUAL CHANNEL DDR: OCZ ?, Corsair TWINX? ....?
i dont know anything about latency or how it affects preformance or anything like that
but keep in mind my purpose, high end gaming, media processing/ 3d studio,encoding,dvd

thanks guys! you know your stuff !

[batboy]

Either A64 or P-4 will be fine for gaming as long as you go with a good vid card like the 9800 Pro or 9800 XT. When you start talking about encoding though, that's where Intel really shines. I would recommend a 2.8C because they are cheaper and overclock about as well as the 3.0C or 3.2C. If you run at 3.4 gig, that will give you more FSB than the higher speed CPUs too. The 2.8C gives you the option of using cheaper PC3200 RAM at the 5:4 ratio with tight timings or something like PC4000 at the 1:1 ratio with more relaxed timings. A cheaper alternative for motherboard might be the Abit AI7. Good luck.