Quote Originally Posted by Lemurmania
Since your PC is already bought, you shouldn't worry about the whole AMD/Intel thing. Done is done.
Good advice - but I would like to pick up on a few of your AMD v Intel points, there is plenty of propaganda on both sides - and nerds tend to get rather hot under the collar about it all.

However, the reason gamers give AMD the love are as follows (I hope nobody minds my expanding on the points already made):

* Watt for watt, ghz for ghz, AMD chips are much faster. A 2 ghz AMD64 will usually spank the lederhosen off a 3 ghz Pentium.
Yes and no - for a start, AMDs don't run 'faster', they perform more per clock cycle, and that's how they keep up with the raw-speed philosophy behind the P4.
Regardless, it's not as easy as you put it, it really depends on the generation of chips we are talking about - in 2003 the P4C 3.0 was out performing the Athlon XP 3000+ (and was sparking alot of 'AMD is really over doing it with their speed ratings' talk), but now the tables have turned, and they will turn again, they always do.

To get all techy though, AMDs philosophy has been more work per clock cycle, while Intel’s has been as much speed as possible - different ways to get to the same result, high performance. However, Intel has discovered that high clock speeds take up to much power and create to much heat, thus the Pentium M (which is the basis for their next generation of CPUs) is much slower, but, like the AMD CPUs, does more work per clock cycle - it also has power consumption that makes the AMD engineers blush (but then again, it was designed as a mobile CPU).
So hats off to AMD for coming up with the smarter philosophy - I can imagine the Intel strategists breaking down when they realised the P4's speed at all costs concept was doomed to fail.

* Dollar for dollar, AMD chips are much faster.
Depends on the CPU - at the low to mid-low range, yes, but the differences are not as glaring as they once were.

* AMD64 CPUs have a much better interface with the computer's RAM. Result: speediness. To add insult, they use cheaper RAM to achieve this result.
Yes, it is faster and much more efficient - though you have to remember that before the innovation of on-die memory controllers, AMD systems had a much slower interface to the memory then P4s did - this was meant to bridge this gap, and did spectacularly.

* The Nforce 4 motherboard is probably the best mobo for gaming yet made. And it wasn't available for the Pentium until very recently. (Honestly, I'm not sure if Nvidia's got the P4 version in production yet ...)
Nforce mobos are the best for AMD gaming systems - but lets face it, your other serious choices include VIA, it's kind of a no brainer.
For P4s, it's harder to say, Nforce4 offers SLI, but intel chipsets have always been great performers (with a few generational hiccups - but the Nforce4 has some problems with certain hardware as well).

* Buying from the guy who doesn't have a monopoly always makes people feel warm and fuzzy.
AMD has approx 40% CPU share in the home market now days (sorry, can't source, but I remember reading about it a few weeks back). Hardly an Intel monopoly - Intel still rules where the big bucks are, corporations - but that's as much down to partners (like Dell and other OEMs), resistance to change of the part of corporate buyers, and a much larger production capacity (so they can deliver the numbers required) then any sort of anti-AMD conspiracy (though you would have trouble convincing some people )

Bottom line: Your PC is purchased, and it will give you much love, and you don't need to worry overmuch about the CPU. After all, the CPU is just one ingredient in what makes a computer fast, and not always the most important one. This lemur is a big fan of subsystems, and making sure that they're pimped out. There's nothing sadder than a good PC with too little RAM, or a slow hard drive, or a bad mobo. All the infrastructure needs to be there. Only then will you notice any difference from the CPU.
Exactly, excellent advice, the computer is only as fast as your slowest component - nothing worse then seeing a AMD X2 4400+ with 512MB of generic RAM (and yeah, I have), or a recent pet peeve of mine, $500 speakers coupled with onboard sound.
In the end, the CPU is unlikely to make a noticeable difference in all but the most highly optimised systems in rather specific circumstances - when you buy a brand spanking new computer, be happy with what you got, cause chances are it kicks some serious bottom - unless it's a Celeron, in which case you get what you deserve.