OK, as it's still continues - just mine 2 pennies

Yeah, that's true, but they have temperature control that lowers the clock speed, so they very rarely perform at their actual specified speed. Where as AMD doesn't, hence faster speed and lower life spans .
Hmmm, you are VERY wrong: Intel latest CPU's consume around 100-140W, while AMD around 70-80W. Next: all new AMD have Cool'n'Quite technology (more often used in mobile PC) and it's much more effective than Intel similiar P4 tech (at idle AMD consumes around 9W). I recommend to look at XBit-Labs articles about this subject. For example, this page: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...64-fx60_3.html



Btw: fastest frequency Intel CPU is 3.7GHz (one of the P4-EE), while AMD is 2.8GHz (FX-57)

If you have not decided about single/dual core CPU - I recommed to buy single core CPU (less power consumption, faster in usual applications). I recommend AMD Athlon64-3000+ or speedier (if you have some spare money to spend). For motherboard you could probably buy something NForce4 based (plain, without SLI, bacause if you ever wanted to activate SLI - you shouldn't have asked these questions at all ).

As for video currently sweetspot should be NVIDIA GF-6800GS (slightly less than $200 in US) or ATI X800GTO (if you don't mind that this card doesn't support shaders 3.0). Another (more costly) pair will be NV GF-7800GT or ATI X1800XL.

That's all :roll: