Kamran, you can build a fine gaming PC for half of what you are talking about spending. You could then put the other half in a high interest account and make another one when your current one becomes obsolete.
All of the newer 2500 desktop bartons are locked. The lower multipliers are unlocked but the higher ones are locked. It would be difficult to find an unlocked barton these days. The biggest advantage of the mobile bartons is that they operate at 1.45 volts compared to the 1.65 of the regular 2500. Plus you have the guaranty that the multipliers are unlocked. When my freind put his in he just set the voltage to 1.65 raised the fsb to 200, and set the multi to 12.5. This gave him 2500mhz no problem with no tempurature issues since he is still operating within the spec of the barton core.
I've been waiting for LCD monitors to improve for some time but they are still too expensive and CRTS still offer better quality for less. About 6 monts ago I bought the Viewsonic P225f and I couldn't be happier.
http://www.intel.com/personal/resources/build/index.htm this is 1 sweet site i personaly like p4 in this website go to the gaming computer (its pretty sweet) its even got the new p4 3.4ghz w/extreme edition hyperthreading
Hell ya on the CRTs -- not just a better d.p. but actual color! (i do digital photography stuff so color matters) Oh and EYESHurt ... (a) i filled out the "Choose a Desktop PC" thing and clicked on "Reccommend me a System" but nothing popped up (actually it reloaded the same page) and (b) The intel website isnt exactly the place to go for an unbiased reccommendation for a machine that isnt ridiculously overpriced _X_X_X_X_X_[small]ASUS A7N8X-X, XP2500+ OC'd to XP3200+ Samsung 1024MB, PC2700 OC'd to PC3200 480GB [3x160GB, 7200, 8MB] EVGA, GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB Rules and Policies: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/2487[/small]
