Athlon 64 3500 Orleans + Games?

Just wondering if this chip (am2) is a good gaming cpu. Or is the Pentium D @ 2.66GHz (533fsb) better?

I'd choose the Athlon. Single core CPU's are still faster than some dual-core ones.

The only problem I have with it is it is 2.2GHz, although I am NOT aquanted with Athlon. I heard this can outpower a 3.2GHz P4, is this right?

Yes, it would outperform the old PD's and P4's (but not conroe). The Intel chip your are asking about, it wouldn't happen to be the 805 would it? The PD 805 are SUPER overclockers. You can get them up to about 3.4 on air and over 4 on water. THG did a review on this chip and verified that it can go that fast.

Yea, it is. Will it ouperform the 3500+?

EDIT:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116001

Also note that I can't afford a nice cooler at the moment (still pulling out money for new mobo).

I'll have more of a chance to give input when I get home, but if you get the right mobo you could upgrade in the future to a conroe processor.

True, but AMD also has really nice dual core cpu's on their am2 mobos as well. The amd athlon runs cooler, and has a lower l2 cache which means less latency. Alhough, the Pentium D has 2 cores, and runs at 2.66GHz; I'm stuck!

EDIT:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/10/dual_41_ghz_cores/index.html

Pentium D 805>3500+ Get the Pentium D because as I have stated before it can overclock like hell and in future if you wanted to upgrade to a Core 2, you could do that with just a simple BOIS update if you had the right motherboard.

Pentium D isnt that great..

Much better than my old Celeron 2.66 @ 3.1GHz lol!

My celeron is locked at 2.8GHZ , sad because it has a multiplier of 22.

lol true.

So have you decided what you wanted?

I want the Pentium D, but my desicion is not yet locked. I did write a post saying that I am getting it, but that's not completely true. Give me 24 Hours to think

Pentium D 805, the 2.66Ghz one is probably 2 2.66Ghz celerons put together , but more cache

Practically! I think the Pentium D would be a tad faster though. I liked my Celeron; it was blazing fast (weird huh)?

Alot of processors seem fast until they start burning DVD's and Playing games..

Right now I'm restricted to a PIII @ 933MHz, and 256mb sdram. I HATE this speed!

lol I got a Gateway that has a P3 with 1000mhz and 512mb of ram..and a GeForce 5500FX 256mb it isnt really that slow unless you start burning dvd's..

Pentium D isn't 2 Celerons with more cache... because a Celeron is just a P4 with LESS cache. So if it had more cache that makes it 2 P4 2.66s. And while Pentium D isn't the best out there it is still better than anything single core and MUCH better than anything with the name Celeron.