I have the opportunity to upgrade my computer. I'm using Poser5, Cinema 4D R8.5 and Vue d'Esprit (most probably 5 in a few weeks). What is the best composition for my computer : Athlon 64 3.2, or Pentium 4 3.4 ? (price is not a concern here, for once...) Thanks in advance for your advice.

I would personally go for athlon 64 :) As everything is going to be 64 bit sooner or later. I am also upgrading to athlon 64 aswell in a few weeks time.

I'm personally just waiting for the new Intel 32/64 hybred chip that is due out next year

I went from Intel to AMD and will never go back again. I just got an AMD 64 and have been so busy playing with it that I've not even been on the boards lately. Runs splendidly and performs just as good as any of the intels I have had in the past. Just call me an ex-intel user, Kristta

I just wanted to chime in, I went from a P4 to a 64 bit Athlon as well and the difference is amazing. There is no way I can do the kind of work I do now on my old computer.

Another Athlon 64 vote here. The Intel P4 does not come close IMHO.

My personal experience is that Poser5 and Vue run more stable on an Athlon XP than on a P4. An Athlon64 will show up as a dual processor machine, a hyperthreading P4 will too. The main difference is that an Athlon64 will indeed give you the speed of a dual processor machine at full speed, while a P4 more or less acts like a dual Pentium 4 at half speed. I'd definitely recommend Athlon64

The -only- caveat I would mention is regarding Cinema; if it is hyperthreading aware, then you may want to consider the P4 just for the enhanced performance it would give it. Otherwise, AMD all the way. I would be very leery of the upcoming EMT64 chip from Intel. Unless they have changed things a lot, it is going to be more a pseudo 64 bit chip; the one they have taped out now only has a 40 bit bus with multiplexing to imitate 64 bit buswidth. They may have changed it...but considering the thermal issues they haven't solved with Prescott, and the fact that if you get a socket 940 motherboard you will be all set for the dual core Opterons due out next year (real dual cores with hypertransport links).

Interesting... Last year I upgraded to a P4 based on performance and "bang for buck." It's interesting to see how the Athlon 64 has shifted this back to AMD.

I run an Athlon 64 with AMD 3400+, 1.5 GB ram, SATA drives, nVidia GeForce--- kicks MAJOR A!

Thanks all for your advice, I'm going for Athlon, then.

Pentium 4. How come the focus is just on the processor? The rest of your system is just as, if not more, important.

Very good point, Becco. If you go with the Socket 754 Athlon 64, I wouldn't use anything less than Kingston ValuRam, for instance. One stick of =almost= anything will most likely boot...but with the signal characteristics of the onchip controller and FSB, mixing two brands is almost a sure fired guarantee of not booting.The '64 is even more unforgiving that most. I've found the ValuRam to be the cheapest that has consistency between batch runs. The socket 939940 still require registered ECC Ram, so that will be an investment, not a purchase. But you have to balance that with getting a dual core processing system with the change of a single chip. Motherboards are next, and you can choose feature vs flash vs stability. If it's stable you want, I have yet to find a better, more hardworking board that Tyan's. They build all of them on the assumption that they are going to be workstation or server boards (if there has been a change in management, this is not promised; just what I know from the past). I have a couple of Tomcat 4's and a Supersocket 7 S1590 that will still boot. I won't count the number of Abit boards that have tanked on me inside of 18 months. Feature vs flash you can get at any hardware website. I've had good luck with Gigabyte, as well. Personally, one of the most indespensable items you can obtain is a Promise card. This adds (depending on the card you get) two more IDE PATA ports (or 4 SATA), so you can hand 4 more drives onto your system without having to reformat and move stuff around. And you can get one that does RAID, or just adds drive connectivity, and doesn't require you to disable your IDE ports on the motherboard itself.