I was wanderng if anyone could direct me towards information on P4 vs Xeon? I figured if I bought a dual CPU mother board and 2.8GHz Xeon CPUs, that it would be about the same price as the "newest" P4 and motherboard but with the Xeon setup I'd have a 5.6GHz PC (and want to upgrade less often). If anyone knows how a dual Xeon PC would compare to Intel's new 750 pin P4 chip called the Prescott(?) that would be even better! Thanks!

not to discourage you but putting 2 2.8 gig chips in one motherboard will not double the speed, it's more like 2/3 of the total speed. It will also depend on the programs you run, some will scream, othere you may not even notice much of a difference.

With `most' programs you won't see much of a difference. Very few programs take advantage of dual processors at this time.

The reason for multiple CPUs, as I understand it, is better multitasking. It may not be the best way to get more FPS in Quake 3, but for getting a faster feeling system, it should help greatly. As for P4 vs. Xeon, I'll pick "none of the above". For the $400 price range, I'd get an Athlon 64. Is the Prescott you speak of the ~$900 "Extreme Edition"? If so, a $750 Athlon 64 FX beats it. I'll admit the latest P4s beat the Athlon XPs, but AMD's 64 bit chips are good for value and performance.

I have never heard of anybody using a Xeon for a desktop computer. Those are for servers. And a dual Xeon??? What do you run??? For most people, a Celeron will do just fine for web browsing and MS Word etc. Are you a gamer? a really hard core gamer who runs a game server? Even then, not all programs support dual processors.

Thanks for the input. I'm not a gamer but I do run a few programes at the same time. I'd probably notice the most differance using my image and video editing programs but does anyone know how much of a difference?

just buy a normal computer, p4 or athlon.