ok here's my 2 cents' worth. Speaking from experience, the AthlonXP 1800+ can be overclocked to 2100+ with air cooling... I'm running it at that speed right now, and my temp is currently 39C... After playing RTCW or CounterStrike for an hour or two, it goes up to 43C... This is with air cooling. Now, it could probably go higher but I really hate upping my FSB that much, in fact I usually leave it at spec (133MHz) - I just wanted to run some benchmarks yesterday and today, so I have it higher again...
The heatsink I am using is the Dynatron 1206BM-0, it comes with a Delta 60mm fan (kinda loud tho)
🙁 and it cost $39.99 at
www.plycon.com. GREAT performance, microfin technology, solid copper (but not too heavy) - everything I was looking for in a heatsink. As far as the rest of my system specs, they're in my sig, as well as a link to the screenshot of WCPUID and SiSoft Sandra 2002, showing a performance rating of 2.541GHz. Not bad for a stock 1.533GHz chip, IMHO...
😀
So, AthlonXP all the way! Can't beat the cost, I mean, I got my mobo+CPU for $285
total...
mavis
edit: oh yeah, in that SiSoft screenshot, you can see my processor compared to a P4 2.0 - I doubt that's the Northwood version (although it should be, since this is Sandra 2002) but still...