Video card for 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 !

 

[football]

Either wait for the new offerings that nvidia will put out on the market soon, or get the ati 9800PRO to be more future proof in the future.

 

[snyper1982]

save some money and buy a fortron/sparkle power supply, dont get enermax, get an antec over enermax. also i would go with te 865 chipset, perfromance difference between the 2 is almost zero last i checked, p4p800 is a great board. 3.2c is a great choice. i have never used m-audio, but i hear they are great, so its really a toss up, i would go with creative though, just because thats what i use now, and i like it. plextor makes the best optical drives last i checked, cant go wrong there. dont get an xt, get 9800 pro, save your self some cash. and lastly, i hear mushkin is the best memory, but i stick with corsair myself, i would get 1gig of twin-x.

 

[Tango57]

if cost is not a factor, go for the athlon 64 3200+. it can outperform the p4 3.2 in many areas and it's future proof with the upcoming 64 bit windows. it also cost slightly less than the p4.