I never did a rendering comaprission, so I guess someone else might be able to answer that question. 1 GB memory should be just fine for Vue. Then again I don't consider Vue to be a powerful rendering tool, so my guess would be performance wouldn't be much different in both P4 or AMD. The problem is VUE handles CPU cycles very poorly. As I'm not an expert, my knowledge in SSE2 is very limited. As far as I know, the settings and parameters are much higher in P4, but it is still a bit sluggish. For instance, a simple operation on 128 bit vectors take at least two cycles and achieve a throughput of one operation per two cycles at best. On the other hand AMD has tripple pipe line, while P4 has only 2. Contrary P4 gives you better clock speed and durability. So, I would say Intel is still a step ahead of AMD. And with their HT technology I think they might went over two steps; but it's still up for observation.