I'm helping my friend source for components for his new computer. His budget is roughly around a 1000 bucks.

This are the parts I came up with:

Intel P4C 3.0GHz
Albatron 875P MB
512MB DDR400 Kingston RAM
MSI 5700 128MB
WD 80GB HDD 8MB cache
Any case......

I was wondering if the new Semprons are better than the P4C. Its cheaper by about 20 bucks and its 64 bit. Does that 64 bit thing have much impact over gaming performance? Or is it just future proofing?

My friend plays mostly sports games, Pro Evo 3, NBA Live etc.....
Is this set-up sufficent to last for a couple of years, say till 2006?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

As far as gaming goes i dont see why not, but if your a power hungry user then you should know that the pentium V is due out around about the middle of next year and it is expecting to fly along at between 5GHz to 7GHz and have 2MB plus of level two cache. regards to the graphics card, your friend could probably benefit from upgrading to 256Mb by the middle of next year. Depending on his budget of course

I have heard that the 64bit chips love games. You asked about future proofing, well I would say that you are getting both gaming performance and a bit of future proofing!

See here for the news stories about Sempron on PCHF:

http://www.pchelpforum.com/modules.p...rticle&sid=262

http://www.pchelpforum.com/modules.p...rticle&sid=302

http://www.pchelpforum.com/modules.p...rticle&sid=536