pentium 4 or amd ??

[TJ-]

whats better,, what should i buy for a new desktop

Intel System Customization

• Build my Celeron/Pentium 4 powered system (Socket 478)
• Build my Pentium 4 powered system (Socket 775)

AMD System Customization

• Build my Duron/Athlon XP powered system (Socket A)
• Build my Athlon 64 powered system (Socket 754)
• Build my Athlon 64/64FX powered system (Socket 939)
• Build my Opteron powered system (Socket 940)

[germanjulian]

either socket 939 or 775.

AMD if you do gaming mostely. Pentium 4 for multitasking (aka word processing and mp3 encoding and wathcing a movie at same time, not just word processing and excel lol) mostely.

I would go for amd64. the future is 64bit.

[davidnsibs]

yipes, thats a *lot* of choice. firstly, whats your budget? Athlon FXs and Pentium 4 EEs are very expensive, for only a tiny bit of extra performance. Opterons are server chips so you probably dont need one of them for a desktop PC unless you run an online business from home or something. Now, Socket As are very good value, lots of people have them, but are getting a bit old now, and i guess you'll want something to last, so I'd say unless youre on a tight budget then consider either a Pentium 4 or an Athlon 64 (personally id go for the athlon as theyre better in games although the P4s tend to be quicker at encoding things such as DVDs). Try to give a bit of an idea of what you want to use the PC for (just internet/office apps, or the latest games) and the sort of price youre thinking of spending. www.anandtech.com ususally has articles on various PCs (budget, overclockers, high-end etc) and reccommendations of whats good to look at

[TJ-]

do u think it would be cheaper to build my own system or buy a complete package...?

this one will cost me 2400 australian...,, its one i put together....

AMD XP 3200+ RETAIL BOX (BARTON CORE) 400MHZ FSB with Fan , ASUS A7V600-X 400MHZ 3DDR400 AGPx8 6PCI LAN AUDIO SATA USB2.0. , Geil 512MB High Performance DDR400 with heatspreader , No Floppy Drives , Seagate 80G 7200RPM SATA-150 8M Cache (3 year warranty) , MSI RX9800PRO RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB TVOUT/DVI , PHILIPS 17" 107S61/75 REAL FLAT BEIGE , No LCD Monitors , No CD Burners , No CD-ROM Drives , No CDRW + DVD-ROMS , SONY: DWU18A10 8X DVD+/-RW & CD-R/RW INT OEM , SONY: INT 16X MAX IDE DVD-ROM DRIVE , Creative Digital Music External sound card , NETGEAR 10/100 Fast Ethernet PCI Network Interface Card. , No Speakers , Logitech Labtec Standard Keyboard , Microsoft Optical Mouse Blue PS2/USB , THERMALTAKE Xaser III Lanfire Mid Tower case (silver) - aluminium made, only 4kg , NetComm NB1300 ADSL Ethernet Modem Router , MICROSOFT: MS WINDOW XP HOME EDITION , System build, 12-month parts and labour warranty EA

[Zardon]

germanjulian pretty much hit it on the head - depends what you want to do. go with the best prices you can get at the end of the day.

[TJ-]

AMD has been surging for the past year and a half or so and enthusiasts are pretty hyped about their x86-64 architecture. But the fact that enthusiasts (and some major manufacturers) are taking the Athlon 64/Athlon FX/Opteron plunge, Dell is still one of the more prominent holdouts:

Dell's stance on this is that they don't see a strong demand from their customers and thus won't consider AMD based PCs just yet. Dell's CEO, Kevin Rollins, makes it very clear that Dell won't be offer AMD based PCs anytime soon, by stating 'We're the most successful PC company on the planet and we don't have AMD'.

Pretty strong words there from Dell's CEO. He is right and Dell's sales have been up for the third quarter, but good times don't always last and relationships can be broken...

[Zardon]

lol Sander Sassen , always great articles.