PocketMatrix

I'd say get an AMD as Celerons are crap.

Something along these lines:
-AMD Thoroughbred 2100+ ($90 or so, maybe a bit higher)
[if you're daring, you can get a 1700+ from excaliberpc.com for $70 and overclock it to 2.3 or so gigs]
-Thermalright SK-6+ heatsink for $10
-Some 60mm fan for $5 or so... just don't get a Delta, it's loud as hell
-Asus NF7 for $100 if you want a kickass board, otherwise get an MSI KT4VL for $65
-256 megs Samsung PC2700 for $35

That should do it...

The CPU should come with a stock heatsink and fan which would be plenty, you don't need to spend the extra money getting more fans and special heatsinks.

I agree, AMD is a much better performer than the Celeron and probably cheaper.

I would have liked to build my own but my wife fought me on that. We just ran up to Circuit City and got a Compaq Presario with an AMD 2200+ (1.8GHz). $539 after rebate. Can I safely overclock this? One more question. I bought a Geforce 3 Ti 200 128Mb video card, a while back, that's in a PIII 933Mhz machine. Would you agree I should install the Geforce the Compaq? The Compaq has an integrated ProSavageDDR KM266 graphics 32Mb chip.

Well the graphics card would help, but it's pretty old, really . But ya, put it in the faster computer. And no, you're not able to overclock that because Compaq and all other manufacturers restrict overclocking ability.

As for the processor itself, it depends. If it's a Thoroughbred it'll overclock fairly well depending on the stepping; if it's a Palomino it'll overclock very badly.

Yes, adding the GF3 will help MONUMENTALLY. I don't understand why PC manufacturers often ship an otherwise nice PC with at totally crappy video card.

Thanks for the info guys. I'm creating recovery cd's now, didn't ship with any, it's taking forever. I can't wait to fire up Unreal II and see how it looks.

Poorly. P4 1.6GHz, GE3, Unreal 2 runs and looks like crap. Athlon XP 1800+, Radeon 9500, Unreal 2 is amazing in comparsion.

I played Unreal II all the way through on my PIII 933. The frame rate was bad but it was still playable.

But it is very video card dependant - which is why I used my comparison.

Isn't unreal about as fast as UT2003, maybe a bit slower? It ran OK-ish with my 1gig athlon and GF2, let me see now how it runs at 2 Ghz...

BTW, the original Unreal still rules all.