I need some HELP. Which is the better processor?

Can't tell ya what to do. what I can say is that never in my life, will I purchase a Dell product. How they manage to stay in business just boggles the human brain sometimes. I have never heard one single good thing about them. My buddy Joe bought a laptop a couple years ago from them. I found it a bit expensive for what he was getting, but oh well, wasnt mine. It ran ok, but a month later, he had to replace the dvd/cd-writer combo in it. It just quit....at the expense of the newly puchased game that it decided to take with it when it went, too.
So he calls up Dell to order his new cd-rom drive. They no longer carry that product. he has to buy this new one they use. its not a combo drive either. and the price was way higher than what he was seeing for generic brands at local retailers, as well as on the net. but Dell said that they simply cannot be used. they wouldnt work, yada yada yada....
well he wasnt paying the price they wanted for a friggin cd drive he didnt even really want. Dell was lying and trying to give him the run-around. This went on for nearly 2 weeks and no matter what, he couldn't his drive anywhere exept on the Dell website...and as I stated, they said it no longer exists.
so he took a chance and went to a store and bought the one he thought should do the trick (a combo drive, btw). of course, it worked just fine. and only set him back about $70cdn at that time.
Well, a year later, Joe had to get another laptop for college. The rule was he had to use the college approved laptops, which his was not. He had to get another one through the college to take the course he wanted. *rolls eyes* They carry only Dell products. So I guess the fee was only $100 for the use of it for the course. If after that he wanted to keep it, he could simply have the...i dunno, ownership or whatever signed over to him. he would carry on the payments to Dell directly. So he bought his Dell laptop(grudgingly). This one seemed to run a little faster (was a 1.3Piii, rather than the 1ghz he had before). Now, the Laptop sold at that time, for around $2000 CDN. It is now 3 years later and they continue to withdraw money from his account. He's paid over $5000 on this Dell craptop! He's talked to them on the phone and asked them to send him an invoice so he can see what he's paid and what he owes. But for whatever reason, they refuse to do so, telling him they can't do that. Obviously, (and if it we me)Joe should call his bank and stop all payments to Dell in the future. That's his mistake, and I've tried to tell him that already. But thats not the point. Their customer service is the worst I have ever seen of any company in my life.
I have dealt with them a few times on behalf of other people and their machines. I know what I am talking about so I can deal with tech support people and understand them where the people I'm helping can't. So I get volunteered
But in all my dealings, all they've ever done is to pass the buck on to the next department.
so yeah, after all that ranting (and I do appologize for it) the bottom line is their Support. Disgusting just isnt a strong enough word to describe it.

What I do, is simply buy each component as I can afford them. When moneys a little tight, I just get one thing at a time.

My last system I bought using http://www.ncix.com . I was thrilled with it, except that I thought they lost my LCD monitor. turned out that it just took a long time to get to my door. (about 4 weeks, where as the rest showed up in a couple days)
As for what cpu...in all honesty, I do like the AMD's mostly due to the heat/power thing.
here's what I built, and am elated with it
A64 X2 3800+ processor
DFI LANParty UT NF4 ULTRA-D motherboard
Leadtek Winfast PX6600GT TDH Extreme video card
2GB OCZ Platinum EL dual channel PC4200
I find the performance of this video card to be more than adequate for Doom3. plus with a little tweaking, you can unlock more of the pipes on this particular model and I find it actually makes a big difference.
I splurged on ram, and probably paid more than I really had to, but I plan to O/C this system a lot.
you can get Kingston ValueRam and it works just great for way less money.

Anyways, hope this helps....even a little

If all men said what they thought, they'd be speechless

do i need to buy a fan/ cooling system if i get the 670? or will it be fine with the stuff they give me?

I wouldn't modify anything on the Dell system, unless you want to void your warranty. You're not overclocking, so the stock heatsink should work fine, at least with the 650 cpu.

You're 'multi-tasking' right now... do you notice any lack of multi-tasking ability? The only thing you'd want a dual-core processor for (other than apps that actually take advantage of it) is burning a CD / DVD while playing a game.... or encoding video / audio while doing something else. If you do a lot of encoding, then the dual-core may make sense for you. If you're just playing games with some light multi-tasking... you won't notice a thing on a single-core setup.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

I think the 650 with HT is good enough for your everyday work, it also has two core in logic.

John