hi im trying to build a new computer but i dont know eather to go for an amd or a pentium. i have 2 specs of the comp one amd and one pentium wich one wold be better for gaming/video playback.

amd:

AMD Athlon 64 3000 Winchester Core, Heatsink and Fan, 512MB 400DDR RAM, Socket 939 Motherboard (third memory stic here)

graphics: ASUS Extreme N6600 /TD - graphics adapter - GF 6600 - 256 MB

memory: 400MHz 184Pin 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM DIMM 2.5V 3.2Gb/Sec. x2 giving a total memory of 1536mb

hard drive: IDE DiamondMax Plus9 PATA 80Gb 2Mb Cache Hard Disk Drive <9.0ms 7200rpm

sound is a creative live 5.1 digital

price: 434 GBP

pentium:

Intel 865PE Chipset Motherboard, Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz 800FSB Processor, Heatsink and Fan, 512MB 400MHz DDR RAM

memory: 400MHz 184Pin 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM DIMM 2.5V 3.2Gb/Sec. x2 giving a total memory of 1536mb

graphics: HIGHTECH ATI Radeon 9800Pro 128MB AGP Graphics Card With ICEQ Cooling Technology

hard drive: IDE DiamondMax Plus9 PATA 80Gb 2Mb Cache Hard Disk Drive <9.0ms 7200rpm

sound is a creative live 5.1 digital

price 485 GBP

please could you give me some feadback as wich ones the better system and is the amd 64 3000 only clocking a 2.1 processor?

both will be running xp home

My personal bias is towards AMD. It's cheaper and gives better performance (AMD64 has more registers and other things that make it faster). It should also run cooler; I think it uses PowerNow so you computer shouldn't get as hot.

Even though AMD chips don't run at the rated speed, the optimizations enable it to perform better, generally, than P4's. Additionally, if you get the 64-bit CPU, you'll be better off when the 64-bit Windows comes out (or you can use Linux64).

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