So I was going to upgrade to a faster P4..and..

....I decided if I'm going to spend the money on a new MB, Chip and Ram, I should probably think about an Athlon64 system.

I have a P4 Northwood 1.6a running at 2.4Ghz stable on stock cooling, and my only 2 AMD boxes are a 1Ghz Athlon and a 1.47Ghz XP1700 or whatever it is, running my MameCab.

I'm totally new to these Athlon64's, except to say that I'm looking into them. Doom3 likes them, Unreal Tournament 2004 doesn't seem to as much......

I'd be looking at an Athlon64 Clawhammer in the 3200+ speed, hoping to overclock it as well....and using an appropriate motherboard. Would prefer not to have a super expensive motherboard if I can avoid it (I dont RAID, I dont Gigabit, etc)....but you know, whatever works.

Is there any real area where an overclocked P4 (like a p4 running at 3.5Ghz) will outperform an overclocked Athlon64?

Also, Do I need to invest in super expensive dual-channel memory, even tho I can't run it in a dual channel mode with the 7xx chipsets? Recommendations please!!

p4 for multitask or amd for gaming :make your choice
i love p4 for memory brandwith , encoding, decoding...
amd in especially A64 when gaming
you not go wrong with borth cpu
my vote is for A64( 64 bit capability and future)

If you are going with 754 just get a board with either the K8T800 pro or the Nforce 3-250 for locked AGP/PCI buses.

If you can wait until next week to buy your motherboard you will have a chance to buy arguably the best mobo for 754 and most likely 939 which is the DFI Lan Party UT 250GB.

I'd go with a socket 939 asus AV8(or A8V?) motherboard and wait for the 90nm A64's to come out.

What would be the point in waiting for the 90nm A64's on the new socket.....besides the dual channel memory which may or may not help in gaming (and thats what the box is for, gaming)....??

It'll definately be a longer wait before the prices come down on those items though.....

Question: Whats a standard overclock on an Athlon64 3200+ on one of those motherboards mentioned above....using, say, the stock cooling with a little arctic silver 3 or 5......and what sort of ram do I need to get there...is PC4000 ok or is PC3200 perfectly acceptable?

(I usually upgrade my ram along with my processors anyhow so...)