I would purchase now rather than wait. An Athlon64 3400+ for socket 754, coupled with an Nvidia 6800GT display card will have you happily gaming for a long time to come.

Alternatively, you could bin that Celeron and replace it with a decent Pentium 4 processor, and drop a 6800GT (and more RAM if necessary) into your current PC. (If your motherboard will accept up to date processors of course). Either way you would have a system which will see you right for ages!

By the time it started to struggle in games the newer emerging technology would be commonplace and more cheaply obtained.

i want to wait till the 6800 ultra or gt becomes cheaper cause I just spent $200 on a video card less then a year ago.

I'm kind of in agreement with Catweazle here. Could your current system take a Pentium 4 3.4ghz chip, or something similar? I'm checking Pricewatch, and they're selling OEM versions of that chip for about $280US. If you bump up the memory on your current system, and upgrade the processor, then you'll be sitting pretty, I imagine.

I'm not trying to be a sounding board for Catweazle, but stick with your current setup, and just upgrade pieces of it. I think that from a fiscal and a performance standpoint, you'll be better off for now.

no way I want to go AMD my current mobo only supports up to a 533Mhz FSb anyways.

Cat,
Would that setup be just as cool for video & multimedia production setup?
I've never quite been able to determine a difference and the why's & whatfor's in the difference between the two; both seem intense to me. Maybe the 10m rpm hd and such as firewire IO would be the difference.
BuddyB

The setup would be extremely capable at video and multimedia production. But if video and multimedia production are your primary intentions for the system, then perhaps a high powered Pentium solution with its hyperthreading capabilities would be better. Not MUCH better, but better nevertheless.

As a Desktop applications and gaming system, the Athlon64 currently has the 'edge'. But as a Workstation, the Pentium has the edge over the equivalent Athlon64, as far as I'm aware.

I made up my mind Im going with the 64 3400+ with 1GB PC3200 RAM and I'll probaly just stick with my 9600XT for a while.

BTW what is Intels equivalant to the 64 3400+?

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...121-501&depa=0

that is the video card I have its core operates at 500mhz and has 128DDR MB operating at 600Mhz.

I get decent graphics with it, so ill stick with it for a while.

Intel does not have an 'equivalent' to the A64 3400+, because it currently does not have a 64/32 desktop processor, nor does it have a 32-bit desktop processor with the 'security bit' protection feature of the Athlon64 line.

In 32-bit desktop Windows computing you could expect the Pentium 4 3.4GHz to be competitive.