Looking for advice on new PC

[Beirut]

£70 - AMD Phenom II X4 840 (fine for now, stick an 8 core bulldozer for £150 in eight months time.

Ahh, the endless AMD vs. Intel debate. Good fun.

I've used AMD CPUs and they were always great, and the price for their top of the line 6-core is ridiculously reasonable. http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16819103913

That said, given the reading I was doing - and keeping in mind I am a flightsim-head and my hardware goes in that direction - it seems the Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs have the edge. And there is (apparently) room to grow with the 1155MB.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

But then again an AMD system is going to be wallet-friendly and I'm sure a rig built with that AMD CPU I linked to above would be stinky fast.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I find the Ars Tech system guide to be a very good starting place for info on basically every piece of hardware;

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guide...11-edition.ars

A couple months out of date, but a good primer.

CR

[naut]

But then again an AMD system is going to be wallet-friendly and I'm sure a rig built with that AMD CPU I linked to above would be stinky fast.

They certainly are. I wouldn't get an AMD if I was running a PC designed for SETI cosmos data crunching. But, the price/performance nature of AMD CPUs make them great for your average tasks/games. Plus, you don't feel bad when it comes time to upgrade, because the cost of replacement isn't so steep.