Ok so I'm at the point of upgrading to a newer CPU and Motherboard and I need some direction. Intel seem to be offering some processors with tasty clockspeeds which are similair prices to some of the Athlon 64 range. Do these Athlons handle 32 bit applications better than a dedicated 32-bit Intel?

I have £300 - £350 to spend on both a CPU and Motherboard. I do kind of fancy the 3200 or 3400+, but I want to hear a good arguement to make me consider going Intel, just to help me in weighing up my options.

In terms of motherboard I dont know whether to go with a socket 939 or 754? I have been reading about various motherboards and the following seem to be popular: 'MSI K8T Neo 2', 'ASUS A8V Deluxe' and 'ASUS SK8V'.

What do you think I should go for?

It all depends on what you will be doing the most on your machine. Games & compiling are faster on the Athlon64 platforms & media encoding is faster on P4 platforms.

If you go Intel with a LGA775, a lot of your budget will be spent on the expensive DDR-2 memory. If you go for a Socket-939 (dual channel) Athlon64 system, it's the CPUs themselves that are expensive.

The good bang for buck systems right now are Socket-754 (single channel) for Athlon64s or Socket-478 for Pentium 4s but both have a limited upgrade path.

AMD has been quitely releasing a 90nm die process Athlon 64 that is 939 pin socket compatible for a little over $200.00. This option is looking pretty good. Of course you have to figure in a PCI-Express Video card in the mix. If you have a nice video card maybe an Athlon 64 with a VGA slot is best in the socket 754 range. AMD is scheduled to drop prices before Christmas. Intel is resisting the urge to Drop prices till after next year. However, they just had an announcement of a price drop for Centrino in preparation for Centrino 2, which only applies to laptops.

Thanks for the input