Help me choose a processor please!

[dgessler]

I've narrowed down my agonizing search to a few processors:

1. AMD Athlon 64 3500+ ($270)
2. Intel Pentium D 820 ($250)
3. Intel Pentium 4 640 3.2 GHz ($270)

This is for a new system I'm building for my freshman year at college, hopefully to last me a long time. All CPU's are priced similarly, and I guess each has their own advantages/disadvantages. I already bought a Lian Li case, a 250GB SATA drive, and a 16x Pioneer DVD burner for $250 (NewEgg). Now I have to make the more important decisions regarding CPU/mobo/vid card.

I hardly game much on my current PC (some old P4 2.4), but I plan to game more in college. But aside from that, I love running lots of programs at once, including for example Photoshop, Dreamweaver, FTP programs, E-mail clients, AIM, MS Office, Winamp, etc. - not all of them at once of course, but at least a few.

General Question #1: I don't think there is a doubt in the world that when pairing a decent to great video card, the AMD chip will give me best gaming performance by far, compared to the Intel's. However I'm concerned with the fact that the Athlon might dissapoint me slightly in non-gaming aspects of my daily computer usage. You know, like compared to HT P4's and of course the Pentium D. Any insight on this?

Question 2: I noticed Intel supports DDR2 memory, while AMD mobo's don't, what the reason for that? So I would be able to use better working/quality RAM with an Intel processor?

Question 3: I know shit about graphics cards, but all I know is that I want to play games like Battlefield 2 with ease. I looked briefly on NewEgg and see they sell a 6800GT 256MB for about $300. That's more than I planned to pay for one. I thought my max would be around $200, does anyone have any suggestions? Would a 128MB 6800, for example, be suffice? Not tryin' to bust my wallet here, but I guess if it comes down to it, and if a card is really worth it, I'd do it.


Thanks so much guys!!!!!!!!
I'm trying to learn a lot more about computers and such, I appreciate any help you guys can offer me.

Dan

 

[Cromewell]

1. Unless you are encoding video the Athlon will handle everything as well as the Pentium (Aside from extremely heavy multitasking)

2. You can get very high quality DDR ram DDR2 is just high bandwidth RAM. AMD doesn't support it because of the on-die memory controller. They are supposedly adding support for DDR2 next year but if the news stories are to be believed they have flipped back and forth on this a few times.

3. You can get a 6600GT for less than $200 now and that will handle games for a while.

 

[jancz3rt]

Yup

Exactly as above mentioned. It is really up to you to decide. However, I would narrow down my choice between the first two. The AMD 64 3500+ will ouperform the last choice in almost everything (although nothing big). As for the DDR2 thing.....I don't think it's worth the price.

JAN

 

[r53s]

Pentium D is dual core and less expensive (now pentiums are budget)...

 

[arclite20]

If you want to game then i recommed you get that AMD 3500. i have built 4 computers using AMD. You can do all just fine.
I agree with what cromewelll says.

 

[MasterGooby]

i'm a light gamer and mostly just fool around on this forum and i have a p4 630 and it does just fine for me. i have a 939 socket athlon 64 3200 in the past and liked it more. it seemed more responsive i guess you could say.