AMD Athlon II X4 630 vs. Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5400

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I'm in the market for a new Desktop PC and have been out of the loop for nearly 8 years. My current processor is a P4 and I have very minimal components installed. So I'm looking towards buying a new one. I've spent the past few days doing some research and essentially have my options down to two. I have no resources/time/whatever to build my own PC, so I'm just going with something I built online via the brand's webstore.

Both options contain nearly the same components apart from the processor.

Option 1 is the HP Pavilion p6310t:
* Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5400
* 4GB DDR3-800MHz SDRAM [2 DIMMs]
* 500GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
* 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5450
* LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
* Integrated 5.1 channel sound with front audio ports

Option 2 is the Dell Studio XPS 7100 :
* AMD Athlon™ II X4 630
* 4GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [2 DIMMs]
* 500GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
* 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5450
* 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
* THX® TruStudio PC™ Audio

Pretty much the same computer save for some little stuff and of course the processor. Both hit around $550 which is hitting the max I can spend (especially after the taxes and such).

Thanks for any help. Just need pointed towards the better CPU.
 
Your choice for anything is the Athlon IIx4 630. The minor increase in single threaded performance will not be worth the E5400. When I say minor, I really mean minor. The four cores of the Athlon will be much more beneficial. Not to mention that the intel system also has ridiculously low speed ram.
 
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Guest

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Now that I look at it, I do see that the HP does have marginally slower RAM.

I was feeling the AMD was the better choice but since I've been out of the loop I was looking for clarification. And that's what I got! Thanks so much for the replies!