I'm getting a new system and am going to go with a 64 bit processor. I tend to favor the AMD over the Pentium 4 because of its cool and quiet technology. However, aside from surfing and using general applications, most of what I will do with my computer is playing the odd game, especially online, and watching videos, both from my hd and streaming media. From what I have read, the Pentium is more suited for video related things. I was just wondering if any of you have watched or done anything with videos and streaming media using an AMD64 and what your experiences with it were. I read that AMD is a bit slower in processing videos so I was wondering if there are any noticable skips or freezes when playing videos or streams. Thanks

1. The amd is made for gaming, that is why it is not good at ripping dvds or anything with media. 2.The pentium 4 is alright for games,but it is for media. If your playing graphically instense games like Doom 3,Half-Life 2, and F.E.A.R Go with AMD Athlon 64 3200+ but if your doing more media then playing those types of games gow with the Pentium 4 HTT

The video thing the Pentium4 is better is Video encoding which needs a lot of integer calculations and that's an area Intel is a little bit better at. On the other hand with each generation both Intel and AMD get closer together at both areas so it's not that much of a difference anymore. Abou watching video from a DVD even my old Pentium2 350MHz could do that without any trouble. About streaming I guess that needs more power but any cpu with 3GHz or AMD's 3000+ rating should be able to do that left handed. The most biggest difference between Intel and AMD is at the moment the power consumption and heat problem. Here AMD is a lot better at the moment because some Precott core will need up to 115W while I just read that they mesured less than 33W on a Athlon64 3000+ socket 939 while running at full load and with activated cool and quiet the Athlon64 got down to about 3W at idle! I own a Athlon64 3000+ Winchester myself and using the AMD boxed cooler I was able to OC that from the original 1800MHz up to 2700MHz but there is just no need for all that power so I clocked it back. The problem is for games you need a good graphic card to get more gaming power and not more cpu power. I ran §DMark 05 at 1800MHz and 2700MHz and the 50% cpu OC just got me about 3% more points. That's no typing error but it was really only 3% more!

AMD64 no questions asked. You will never have issues playing video on anything higher than a pentium 2, and the AMD64 is the best by far for games.