WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST TO GO WITH...

[jackiekl]

I am debating on whether to purchase the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 533 FSB 486 processor or the AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 939 processor.

Can anyone give me some suggestion of which on I should go for.  I don't do much extensive gaming, only play like Starcraft, Dawn of War most of the time and other times just homework using words excel.  I also like buring cds and dvds.  I like to multi-task opening bunch of programs at the same time, basically.  

Thanks for your help in advance.
Jackie

[neb1211]

Right now AMD is the way to go.  The Athlon 64 is cheaper and would perform better than the P4.

[tomalakborg]

No question - it's the amd over the p4 - for one, the speed, the price, the nforce chipset you can rock with the amd, and best reason yet, the FSB speed - 533mhz is not going to compare to the amd.  

[Tytanium]

Athlon 64 would be your best bet.  Cheaper and performs better.  Their dual core option also blows away intel.  Not only does it perform on average 20% better in games than any intel dual core procesor, it is also the performance king in 90% of content creation applications.

The Athlon 64 3000+'s are now out of production, but the residual stock in retailers runs about $139.  The A64 X2 3800+ dual core is the lowest end AMD dual core and runs around 320-300 dollars.

[neb1211]

What kind of programs are you going to be multitasking with?  In most cases you would be just fine with a single core processor.