Re: which cpu
roughly speaking there is a price/performance parity between AMD and Intel right now when talking about:
AMD PII X3 vs Intel C2D (100 - 130 GBP)
AMD PII X4 vs Intel C2Q (140 - 180 GBP)
It used to be that quality intel boards cost more than quality AMD boards, but they are both in the same 100-125 GBP ball-park these days.
Where this doesn't apply is the <100 GBP market as AMD A64 dual-cores are not competitive and the >200 GBP market where AMD does not compete at all.
As a general rule of thumb I would never spend more than 66% the price of the intended graphics card for the CPU, so if you are buying a 1GB nVidia 280GTX GPU for £270 then i would not spend more than £180 on a CPU which would mean either a Phenom II X4 3.0GHz or a C2Q 9400 at 2.66GHz to create a well balanced system.
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