need some help with this system!

hey guys... i have 1200 $ for a graphics pc (maya, max etc...)

ok.. i have the pc in my sig:
p4 [email protected]
p4p800 - deluxe
1GB ram
radeon 9800pro ICEQ

now... my main question is... : what boards made themselves noticed that have pci X.. i mean with i875 there was ic7-max3 and p4p800/p4c800...

1) so which are the leaders with the new p4 series?
2) so i dont post this in another forum part: which of the new p4's ovreclock pretty well (as with the old ones the 2.4c did as so on..)

just fire away with some opinions... in the meanwhile i will read as much as i can about the new p4 chips and motherboards.. but you guys will help me decide the final outcome

thanks alot
Q.

you mean PCI-E?

the P5ND2 looks very impressive. Dual core support as well (as long as you get faster than the 820).

the 6xx series overclock very nicely.

You may want to look at a dual core CPU like the 830. not much for overclocking, i'm sure but performance would be very high in those types of apps.

The 6XX series P-4 with 2M cache and new stepping are looking awesome. If I were to buy one right now, it would probably be the 640, they seem to be averaging 4.2 to 4.6 gig fairly consistently with good cooling. The extra cache helps with performance too.

I have an Abit AA8XE and have been very happy with it. It's a stable mobo and great overclocker with lots of features. The 6XX series would be a excellent match with this mobo. It has PCI-E and DDR2 RAM, so be aware that you'll probably need to upgrade RAM too.

But, we are at the crossroads for motherboards. If you want to retain the ability for a possible future upgrade path to the dual cores, then you should think about the i955 chipset like the Abit AW8. These are brand new and not readily available yet, so we don't know how they O/C or how well they hold up yet.

i see... wll i checked some benchmarks on tomshardware and saw that the performance gain from the i875 to the new chipsets are neglijable. Also the Graphic cards bring some improvement but at a very hight price.

so i thought it would be better for a to buy this since i only have 1200 bucks
p4 3.2 prescott
abit ic7-max3
2gb ram (possibly A-DAta, or Corsair)
radeon 9800pro (and mod it to xt)

damn i dont know.. i made some quick math and:
abit aa8xe - 183
p4 640 - 258
2GB ram samsung DDR533- 270
sapphire x800pro - 295 (this is damn expensiv)

thts 1200 bucks (the prices are in euro)

Not sure how soon you plan to buy stuff, but a couple of new vid card chipsets should be available later this summer. That will drop the price on the X800 series. Double check the price of the AA8XE and make sure it's the regular version, not the Fatal1ty or Third Eye (which are more expensive).

if you ever intended to move to dual core Prescott, you should look at the nforce4 or Intel 945/955 chipsets.