Thinking about buying a new computer!

[CkVega]

Well, its getting to that time again when I must hand over several hundred earth pounds to some shady components retailer in the darkest quarters of Manchester.
Not sure how much I want to spend yet, but I'm not ruleing any CPU type out.
So my question to people who have upgraded/bought new systems recently is:
What CPU/Motherboard/Graphics card combination would you recomend?

Currently thinking about some high(ish) end P4 cpu and a sparkle 6800 GT (or whatever it is) graphics card.

Any advice/experience people have with products would be totally appreciated :)

(please no AMD/intel/whoever bashing)

[Terayon]

well the only advice im qualified to give is an amd 64 with an nforce board beats any high end pentium 4 extreme and runs cooler. that and i heard (may not be true) the cheaper 6800 that is around 280$ american can have 4 more pipelines unlocked. but the ddr is ddr-1 and it has 128 megs of ram while the higher end modles (spelling?) have 256.

so basicly from what i have personaly seen a 64but amd is where you may want to go.

[CkVega]

Forgot to mention, I do quite alot of cpu intensive work (converting video files and stuff like that) so the CPU I go for must be able to perform well at that.

[Terayon]

mmm well from what i have been reading the pentium ee edition is better for all kinds of video editing. if you are interested here (http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030923/athlon_64-35.html) is a nice review for them. you may want to glance over it. also i take back the 64 bit being better thenthe pentium ee.

[ZyproN]

mate, I just sold me p4 3ghz, im going for amd 64 its alot better. Forget intel they lost the new amd 64 is working perfect not getting to hot, not using much power its perfect. I have always liked intel cpu's more then amd, it was hard for me to switch, but there is not anything better.

Mix it whit a Geforce 6 ULTRA card if you have the money if not, then take radeon 9800 pro.

If you have money then take a ASUS K8 card whit nForce3 its perfect and if you want its the best card for overclocking that i know of ;)

[Barak]

and a sparkle 6800 GT (or whatever it is) graphics card.

Er vega mate stay away from Sparkle get an MSI, ASUS or Gainward

number of RMAs i've had with sparkle is stupid

[Agent L]

Look carefully at socket type of amd64, there is new socket 939. 939 cpus have built-in dual channel mem ctrler so no chipset can slow it down here. All 940(Athlon 64 FX) will be replaced by 939 and some of 754(normal Athlon 64) too.