For an objective and distinctly non religious view on hardware issues, visit http://www.tomshardware.com. There is comparison of AMD and Intel there in abundance. Bear in mind that the main concerns for 3D rendering are floating point performance (FPU) and stability. Also bear in mind that having the latest and fastest hardware will cost megabucks. The difference between the cost of a 1Ghz processor and a 600Mhz version is more than the cost of Poser, and will buy you a lot of models from Zygote, etc, etc. Since you intend to run 3DStudio Max, you should ideally be using WindowsNT (Win2000 not fully supported as yet). Using this OS enables you use two (or more) processors. You'll most likely find that running Max on a dual CPU system running at 600Mhz will be faster and more flexible than a single CPU system at 1Ghz. Poser will not benefit speedwise from two processors, other than being able to render safely in its own 'space' while you use the machine for other things. Win9x multitasking isn't nearly as good. Last waffle from me: for serious CGI work, 256mb of extra memory will be more than ten times as useful to you than 256Mhz of extra CPU speed.