I want to build a new fast Linux Desktop for home use.
I have a reasonable budget but dont want to spend more than I have to.
My main question is whether the Dual core proc is a good idea or to get a fast AMD 64 single core instead ( faster clock speed than the dual ) as this is just a desktop system and not a server.

Correct me where I am wrong, or give your opinion on what would be better and why please. Thanks

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ w/ 2x512K Cache
2x512 PC3200 Kingston RAM
Asus A8N-E w/ DualDDR400, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, SATA2.0, PCI-E x16
Seagate 160GB Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II w/ NCQ, 8MB Cache

So, thoughts on this? Dual core or single core?

Thanks for the assistance. Trying to figure out what is best before spending the $

Nice smoking system; however, it could be complead overkill for what you are intending to use it. Linux by itself is so much fast than WindowsXP. I run a AMD K7 850MHz with FreeBSD and KDE and it blows my AMD XP 2000+ with Windows XP away.

I think the AMD 64 X2 would be great for music editing and video rendering

The differance between the 64 and 64 X2 is about $100, better than spending it on uping the CPU from 64 3800+ to a 64 4000+ all most no gain

So is the dual 3800 X2 the way to go? Or a Single 3700+ Athlon do you think?
Is SATA 2 worth it?
If I dont go SATA 2, I could get away with an AGP card I already have too.

What do they have to do with each other?
Sata2 offers 150MB/sec more than Sata1. Too bad neither can get anywhere near what they offer. At this point % usage is more important than interconnect. A 1/4 used ATA drive will be faster than a 3/4 full SATA drive.
The Abit AV8 is a great agp board that supports single or dual core chips.
The SanDiego 3700 is the best bang for buck (I think) right now.

Hmmm...single core or dual core. Debatable.

For basic Linux usage, either one is really overkill, as emerald noted. Many apps are SMP-enabled--xine is multithreaded for example--but even so, current single-core setups are still overkill. It's almost the same for gaming, although a few recent games (like Doom 3) hog the CPU just enough for you to feel it on a 1.8GHz single-core CPU.

One thing, though, if you plan to do a lot of compiling, dual-core would really be better. More often than not, you can enable parallel-building of source code simply by using "make -j2" (or "make -j4" if you have four cores, etc.). Compile jobs set up this way scale almost linearly with multiple cores, so a couple of 1.8GHz cores would likely do you better than a single 2.4GHz core.