I'm sure this has been discussed, but with my dialup I'd rather not go sorting through a bunch of old posts.....

my question is this: which cpu is best for what? Thinking of my nest system here; I'll be in college so I'll be doing school related stuff, will be using Win XP, I play some games, but I'm not really a hard core gamer, I generally play first-person action/adventure/simulation (ie Morrowind; big Mechwarrior fan).
So I would like opinions on which cpu I should be looking for in my next system.

Are you going to be doing video editing, and stuff like that? Intel is better for encoding and stuff, and AMD is better for games. So if you are taking a course where you will be editing video, go with Intel.

No, I'm going to be a biology major, so I highly doubt I'll be doing any video editing for college courses, and its not something I do as a hobby. There might be a small chance that I'll be doing a few programming courses (java, vb, open gl) to continue my work from highschool, but I doubt I'll have time to do those with my bio courseload.

Then i would go AMD if you like playing games, and you think you will play games more then doing encoding projects.

alright, AMD it is then; the fastest AMD I can find (on newegg) is like 2.4ghz...whats up with this? (sorry, I'm not too informed on amd processors - used only intel thus far)

Go AMD, its the best value for money for most people in my opinion. And the AMD would do fine for some light sound/video editing work, I've never had problems.

On a budget go with athlon XP

Got plenty of cash go P4

Got too much money, go Athlon 64

Also the money you can save by getting Athlon means you can get a better video card!

That should explain your 2.4 GHz problem.

alright, thoughts on this one: Athlon 64 3200+ 512K cache >>> See It Here on newegg.

Looks good to me, just make sure everything is compatible before you buy.

one last question: Windows (XP) using a 64 bit processor? are they compatable? I'll start a new thread as soon as I get back from the gym listing the parts I am considering using in this system (my first attempt at building a system BTW)

it should be said that you get your DDR-Memory to be as fast or faster than the FSB of the AMD of choice,,

Speaking from experience yes.
Intel and AMD were at one point both working on 64bit solutions. AMD went down the road of providing an enhanced CPU with 64bit solutions, so that it could still execute 32bit code but when necessary operate using 64bit code. Intel initially opted for their own 64bit only system but are now offering a similar 32/64 type solution. At the moment the only 64bit operating systems available are Linux distributions. Windows XP 64bit is still at beta (which you can signup for and download but I've found it to be slow and not worth the hassle). Just remember to get at least PC3200 DDR ram to pair with a 3200+ (whether its 64 or not). Running the ram at the same speed as the CPU front side bus will give better performance than running with slower ram.