Did I make a bad decision???

[Chaffers]

I purchased the following components relatively recently (After blowing my previous mobo...):-

£105 AMD Athlon XP 3200+
£75 Asus A7N8X-E/Deluxe (NForce2 Ultra400 Chipset)
£72 Kingston 512Mb DDR SDRAM 400Mhz PC3200 (Running @333Mhz)
£105 Asus GeforceFX 5700 256Mb

After reading stuff on this forum, I realised that the 3200+ was a bad idea since I could have got a 2500+ and overclocked it... And the FX5700 was a bad idea because the Nvidia mid range cards aren't anything to write home about, since the higher end cards are only a little bit more...

Can someone put me out of my misery and tell me that I was a fool to buy what I bought, or am I just stresssing over nothing?

Also, with my system, what can I overclock and approxiamately by how much?
The Asus graphics card has a bundled program that allows me to change the engine and memory freq... Would it be better to use this one or the Nvidia one?

Thanks in advance!!

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AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Asus A7N8X-E/Deluxe (NForce2 Ultra400 Chipset)
Kingston Hyper X 768Mb DDR SDRAM 333Mhz PC2700
Kingston 512Mb DDR SDRAM 400Mhz PC3200 (Running @333Mhz)
Asus GeforceFX 5700 256Mb
Maxtor 120Gb HDD (7200rpm 8Mb Cache)
Alcatel Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL modem
Other miscellaneous USB devices
Lite-on 52w/32rw/52r CD-RW
Antec 480W TrueBlue PSU
Windows XP Pro
Unbranded Realtek 10/100 NIC
System Idle @ ~50 degrees Centrigrade/~122 degrees Fahrenheit

[filipino]

nope you did not.. its cool

[Wishmaster]

the only thing you could have bought diff' was the gfx card, i bouth a 5700 ultra at the start of the year, but it still plays ut3k4 on highest details. And you didnt pay that much for it either.

enjoy you computer. Its not at all bad!.

[originel]

i don't know very much about OC'ing, but i would question how stable the 2500+ is when running at 400mHz (err 200, whatever) FSB. The 3200+ is natively a 400mHz FSB chip whereas the 2500+ is not. but then again i don't know much about OC'ing. anyways it's not like you just bought an $800 athlonFX or anything. the only thing i see is the graphics card, i would have gone for a 9800pro instead.

[bombledmonk]

On ths subject, You didn't make a mistake..... you could have had it a little cheaper, but I'm sure you'll be happy.
The only thing I see is that 50C temp at idle. That's nothing to worry about, but it is a bit high for an idle cpu.

Quote:

Originally Posted by originel

i don't know very much about OC'ing, but i would question how stable the 2500+ is when running at 400mHz (err 200, whatever) FSB. The 3200+ is natively a 400mHz FSB chip whereas the 2500+ is not. but then again i don't know much about OC'ing.

These days it's about impossible to buy a 2500+ that can't overclock up to 200fsb and run at a full 3200+ or higher. (the romour going around is that AMD pretty much makes 3200+ chips now and underclocks them for all the other models. But don't take my word for it,.. it's only a hearsay.)

[grandchehaw]

If your happy with the purchase then that is all that matters. When I purchase compoents I buy them for what they are, not what they can be. Some people enjoy squeezing every last ounce out of their machine and some don't.