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Yeah, if you know how to put a heatsink on, I always figure its a good idea to just OC a 2500+ Barton XP and spend the money on girls, beer, strippers, or whatever your vice is.
Just my take.
It really IS just as easy to OC an athlon as to put a 3200 in it. You just have to buy good ram, a decent 30$ heatsink (some use retail heatsinks, but I wouldn't), make sure you have case fans and ventillation, and everything else is done in software anyway.
Oh, and if you are *worried* about your overclocked chip dying in a year, you will be able to buy a new one in a year for about 30 bucks or so anyway.
Or a 3200+ for about 50, probably, by that point.
No reason to get a 3200+ when 90 bucks get you everything you need.
BTW, a 2500+ overclocked to 3200+ w/ good CAS 2.5 or Cas 2 ram should beat a 3200+ stock (isn't really an overclockable chip) with generic ram anyway. Both are running at 400mhz fsb.
My rec.... whatever you do, go AMD if gaming is your concern.
If what you need to do is encode media constantly, get Intel.
I DO want to do a lot of media encoding/ripping, but I'm still going w/ 2500+ Barton due to the fact that it is so cheap and can easily hit 3200+ for 90 bucks.
For the record, the only probs I've ever had w/ AMD had more to do w/ the crappy motherboards I was using than the cpu itself.
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