AMD or Intel???

I will be looking to get a new computer pretty soon. (Oct-Nov 2009)My present one is a HP Pavilion 523n, 2002!!! Now as far as all that "mumbo-jumbo" goes, I am a novice, so please take it easy on me boys (and gals ). Now I will tell ya about my puter: OS: Windows xp Home edition System Model: 523N BIOS: Phoenix-AwardBIOS v6.00PG Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2200 ,MMX 3DNow, ~1.8GHz Memory: 512MB RAM And thats about all I think I need to put into this. I have used my puter mainly for home stuff i.e., web surfing, game playing, photos, videos, burning CD's, watching DVDs, emails, CD games (I have a 14 yr old son..lol)...umm what else, thats about it. Now my question is this: Which is better for my uses, AMD or Intel??? Another thing, I am not rich, so a puter for $700.00(tx included) ois what Im looking for here. Is there such a computer in existence for this kinda "cheap" money????
If so, which computer do you
recommend?? Is there a decent HP
puter out there for this kinda
money?? Which one?
Thanks for helping out a "still
a beginner even after 7 yrs!!!"

I look forward to your response(s) Thanks a bunch Denise )

Build your own computer, oh no but you are a novice? Wow your previous computer was worse than my pavilion slimline. And that had no upgrade potential whatsoever. Go for AMD, buy a phenom ii 550be/545 if you are wanting to save money and have good performance at the same time. Buy an ATI 4850 or GTS 250, if they cost near a 4870 buy that. What monitor size do you have. If you have a 19 inch monitor with a 1280 x 1024 resolution then the gts 250 or ati 4850 will do just fine on it. You will be able to play most of the modern games on their highest settings (you can with any graphics card but i mean having a pleasurable non laging game) Actually i really recommend you to build your own computer, it's as simple as lego, just plug all the stuff into each other and chuck the operating system installation disk into the computer. Get a micro atx motherboard to save money or something cheap, and you'll be much less confused, it is really simple building a computer. I can recommend motherboard which are really simple good and plug and play which you don't have to mess around with anything like cmos and stuff to get it to work.

Check the homebuilt section, there are a lot of builds in there that can actually be put together for under the 700 dollar budget and should do some gaming as well.