One thing you may want to consider is heat, the amds run quite a bit hotter than the pentiums. So if you are doing heavy duty work (rendering,compiling,gaming) and in a fairly hot climate you will need good cooling in the summer with the amds (more cooling= more noise or hassle). I recently got a athlon 2800 barton and it runs much hotter than my pentium. The benchmarks and such i looked at prior to going with the amd 2800 were very close to the p4 2.8 some most were just under (just over the p4 2.66) and a few surpassed the p4 2.8.