CPU Help

[Nightmaiden]

Alright, I've very new at this sort of thing. I'm wanting to build my own computer for an A+ course I'm taking, and this'll be a first for me.

I'm looking at a couple CPUs for a my computer, but I'm not sure whether to try AMD or Intel. Two processors I'm looking at, and trying to figure out which would be the fastest for the best price are:

~AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+ (2.2Ghz), 512KB Level 2 Cache (Not sure about the FSB speed)

~Intel Pentium 4 (2.8 GHz), 1MB Level 2 Cache, 800 MHz FSB

It looks like the Pentium 4 is better, but I'm not sure if it's the best overall. If someone could help with this and maybe make suggestions, I'd appreciate it greatly.

~Brandie

 

[ksoth]

It depends on what you are going to do with it. Read the reviews on this site and look at the benchmarks to see how each perform in the specific tasks you will be using them for.

--
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<font color=red>"Like what?"</font color=red>
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<A HREF="http://images.southparkstudios.com/media/video/707/slurpees.mov" target="_new">South Park</A>

 

[Crashman]

Athlon 64 would have better performance in most applications.

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<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[endyen]

For compiling etc, the A64 system is considerably better. For most operations, the Amd system would be fairly equal to a P4e 3.2.
Once M$ brings out Win64, the gap will widden.