On my new comp im building, should i get an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 1GHz FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor for $367 or the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 1GHz FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor for $267? Which 1 is is a better value, the cheaper, more efficiant 3500+ or the better, more expensive 3800+?

Neither. Get the 3700+ san diego instead... Roger ASPIRE ATXB4KLW-AL Antec 400W ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe AMD 3700+ San Diego Corsair 1GB 2x512 eVGA 6600GT 250GB Hard Drive Sound Blaster Audigy Windows XP HOME W/SP2

the AMD 64 Venice chips are good ones, but aren't worth that wuch money. you certainly don't need a 300 dollars CPU to play doom 3... Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours.

Both the above have valid points. The San Diego & Venice cores are basically the same, the only major difference is the amount of L2 cache. The Venice has 512k, the SanDiego has 1MB, but the extra 512k of the San Diego comes at a premium. The best value would be the 3200+ Venice ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

I agree. I'd either go Venice 3200 or the San Diego, which for the money isn't worth it unless you're doing things that need more cache like heavy duty media encoding, etc. Even then money should be spent elsewhere first (faster disk subsystem, more RAM, etc.). "Barbara Streisand hasn't ruined the culture since Yentl."