Alright...Don't ask about budget limitations, I don't even know what I'm buying yet.

I had a computer thread a while back, but this is more specific.

For a processor, should I get a AMD (64) or P4?

A Pentium 4 (530) 3.0 LGA775 is 189.99 (or 187.00)
An AMD 64 3200+ OEM would be 196.00 (plus the price of a heatsink/fan)

Right now, I'm definately leaning to the P4 because I've worked with them before, they're good for gaming (I'm not gunning for the absolute top of the line...just great gaming), and for other applications, they work just as well. 64-bit is not yet mainstream and, thusly, I wouldn't be using that aspect of it yet.

So, those of PC-learnedness (yes, I am PC learned, but I need non-biased opinions [or atleast some towards Intel...too many gamer-nerds yelling for AMD]), what be thy answer!

I've heard that Microsoft has discontinued Windows XP 64bit edition, so don't get Intel's Itanium, however they are still doing 32 bit procs with 64 extensions. If Intel's chip is not being supported, I highly doubt the AMD chip will as well. Stick to a P4, perhaps look into Hyper Threading.

Perhaps Longhorn will have 64 bit support, but for now stick to 32bit (standard x86) or HT.

If you're big on graphics, find a board with PCI express graphics instead of AGp, supposedly its way faster...

And Finally, steer away from Rambus ram. Don't be lured by its super low latency and really high frequency.. (1066mhz...) . The price tag and rareness of the ram make it hardly worth it.

I'm looking at the LGA775 Pentium 4 530 (3.0ghz w/ HT), as I said above.
I have 1024MB of PC3200 DDR RAM, and I will be getting a PCI-e, for the X800 XL (pretty budget, but still great---somewhere around $299)

But rambus sounds so cool and everything, yea might as well not though it's the big NEXT THING.

Go with P4, who cares what the other people say? And get hyper-threading.

:o Microsoft must be kidding or something, 64-bit is hitting mainstream! How can they cancel the 64-bit edition? Well for one thing it looked like
"a blast from the past" -pc mangazine
and I agree, I saw some screenshots and it looked like xp in classic style, why they did that I don't know, 64-bit edition is kinda hard for them I suppose

Microsoft claims that Longhorn will be contain completely new code, I heard that somewhere and it doesn't make sense Windows already contains millions of lines of code and rewriting it? Also they dropped their file system project, called WinFS which is a completely new way of organizing the files, but it's rumored it will be an add-on later, must get longhorn and it's slick effects, which is WinFX, I think.

Itanium is not very popular, Intel needs to rethink their strategy, they already rolling out AMD rip-offs, like the anti-virus chip thingy. Innovation comes only when you're holding that little 1% market space. Apple and AMD, two good examples.

But then again, when you have only 1% of the market, you lose the mainstream to the big guys, only become a cult-favorite, and then the company either grows and enters the mainstream, betraying the "nonconformists" or withers and dies.

And I wouldn't dare go for anything less than HT. (as I said above)

AMD 64, but it's 2 am and I'd like to get up tommorow so I'll elaborate later. Just my personal opinion right now.

Well, then, Elaborate. And don't give me any of the AMDs are for gaming, INTELs are for "work" bullsh*t. I do it all.

http://anandtech.com
http://arstechnica.com
http://tomshardware.com

These guys are trustworthy, and their opinions are logically understandable no matter if you think they're right or wrong.

Dad and I have relied mostly on these sites for computer information. They've generally been pretty unbiased, and have been harshly critical of badly-done AMD projects like the higher-model-number athlon xps (3000+, 3200+ X_X)

All three sites produce in-depth benchmarkings and reviews of processors.

Right now they all are happy with the Athlon 64. All three sites put Athlon 64s on top for most systems, with Toms Hardware calling the top AMD and Intel processors a draw and Arstechnica going for dual AMD Opterons for top processor.

Backstory. It's simplistic and might have errors, but should be pretty correct.

Intel has far more money then AMD does, but they're too big of a company.. they're not getting much bang for their buck in processor development. They've got quite a few deals with manufacturers such as Dell, helped by the fact that AMD doesn't currently have the manufacturing power to supply the volume Intel does.

Aside from this, Intel has been following a strategy of increasing the mhz of the processor. Think of it as how many "cycles" of work the processor can do in a certain amount of time.

Top Intel Pentium 4s run at up to 3.6 or 3.8 ghz, compared to the 2.4 or 2.6 ghz AMD chips. However, Intel's run into a wall at how far they can jack their speeds up.. so they're responding by dumping massive amounts of money into increasing the onboard chip memory as a last resort to boost performance.

AMD has been optimizing their processors to do more work per cycle. As this means their processors don't have to run as many cycles to accomplish the same work, they run cooler. Several other problems are solved by AMD's foresight. Their Athlon 64 chips have an on-die memory controller which is obcenely useful for games among other things. Overall, the AMD chips currently have superior performance, run cooler, take less power.

Both companies are trying to release dual-core solutions (two slightly slower processors on one physical chip). AMD has been planning dual-core for longer, but we'll just have to see how it turns out. It'll be some time before the dual-core processors are released, supported, and become affordable at any rate.

To be completely scientific you can state how fast your computer processor is. Frequency (hz) is by definitions cycles or operations per second.

So for example, my processor is 2.5Ghz, or 2,519Mhz, or 2,533,000,000hz; thus it can run roughly 2 and a half billion operations per second. (operation being like 1+1 or something like that, all problems can be divided up into simpler operations and these are what the processor sees. )

Random Thought:
From what I heard NASA recently installed themselves a massive super computer made from a room or server tower sized machines. It was estimated to run about 45 trillion operations per second. Translated thats like 45 Thz (w00t). IBM owns the fastest (I think) super computer that does 70 Trillion opers per second, 70 Thz, yes thats Terrahertz How would you like to play WoW on that?

Mind you these super computers are actually a large group of regular (well, regular comparatively) computers somehow networked together. I was watching them building each stack of servers and they had like a trolley cart of 512Mb DDR ram chips, the boards were dual processors and had like 8 or so ram slots. The lady doing the building was just sitting there snapping in SOO much ram.. The fans and powersupplies were nuts too.. I was drooling. Really. WOW... The kind of calculations they do, even on computers this fast take days... imagine what that would be like for a computer like the one you are using?

*drools at mention of owning a damn supercomputer*

That would be entirely orgasmic...i mean...awesome.

I understand AMDs whole scheme and what Intel does. But I still question how AMD can continue to put out their "SUPERIOR" processors for less.

AMD64 is looking good...but I've got a spot in my heart for Intel. And I game. And I do "corperate" work. I'm literally torn.

XD I guess I'll make a choice eventually. Please continue to fill this thread with things that will help me much.

Again, Intel has to pump the mhz up to incredible limits. This creates heat problems and expense. AMD picked the better approach.

Also, despite Intel's size, they can't neccesarily get the people to work for them they want... quite a few people at AMD used to work for Alpha (old competitor of Intel) and would not accept jobs at Intel.