I built my first system 3 years ago. It is an AMD Athlon based system. I am about to build a new computer next month. I am trying to choose between dual core vs. quad and Intel vs. AMD. The dual cpus I am considering are E8400 vs. athlon 6400 x 2. The quads are the phenom 9750 vs. the Q6600. I most likely will not do any overclocking. I do a lot of encoding audio and some video. I am starting to edit photos since I just bought a digital camera. I play a few games like World of Warcraft, Splinter Cell and the Sims.
Other components I plan to use:
- XFX PVT88PYDF4 GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP
- GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 (Intel P35 Intel) GIGABYTE GA-MA770-DS3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 (AMD)
- G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066
- Window Vista
A little advice will be much appreciated

If you plan on building again in 3 years, in that time you might find a need for 4 cores. I think you'll appreciate the capabilities of a quad-core even in games that only support dual-cores because the other two cores can be used to offload Windows stuff or whatever else you have going on (FRAPS, Vent, TS, etc). A Q6600 begs to be OC'd though, so if you don't think you'll need that kind of multitasking sweetness, you'll get better framerates with a higher clocked dual-core on most games. My E6600 @ 3GHz gets 40fps on average in the Crysis CPU benchmark with 2xAA, 16xAF, everything on High, 1280x1024 (yea not too high I know), 9800GTX @ stock speeds.

But if you have a choice, I wouldn't go with AMD at the moment. Any Intel CPU at the same price-point will beat an AMD. The Q6600, which is one of the oldest quad-cores, will beat the fastest AMD quad if that tells you anything. Most Intel dual-cores will beat the Phenom in gaming except for those specifically designed for quad-core processors, same with encoding. In some games, the Phenom is down there with the X2 4000+. Not really a great gaming CPU in my opinion.

And one more thing, your RAM. I'd go with 4GB if you can. 4GB is the new 2GB with Vista and since you're probably picking the 32bit version, you can't use more than 3.5GB anyway. Probably closer to 3.4GB with your configuration. Either way I think you'll be disappointed with 2GB.

seriously consider moving towards 64bit os. its worth being able to use 4 or more gb of ram. you will benifit more from a qaud core doing video encoding.
intel cpu
i find a good guide for cpu's atm is
dual core with higher clockspeeds will benefit gamers
qaud core will load share better (depends on application as well) better for media encoding, compiling, photo editing.
nvidia graphics, consider the 9600gt or paying a little more for the 9800gtx instead.

you may find your motherboard will become outdated and difficult to upgrade before 3 years (just an observation based on the x38 and x48 chipsets out)

"you may find your motherboard will become outdated and difficult to upgrade before 3 years (just an observation based on the x38 and x48 chipsets out)"


No offense, but would you mind enlightening everyone of exactly which chipset wouldn't be difficult to upgrade in the next 3 years?

nvidia 790i with 3way sli and ddr3 memory should be around for a while.

some motherboards also have trouble with wolfdale proccessors, when they bring out the next set of cores theres a good chance p-35 wont work with them.

however you are right i have no idea what will work in the future and the next set of hardware to come out may need entirely new platforms.

i would still go a x38chip set over the p-35 because of higher performance now and theres a better chance of a new cpu working on the x38 then the p35.

besides we all know computers are redundant paper weights by the time they reach your door