The processor to beat is the 3400+ on the Newcastle core and socket 754, as I said. Two other models of the 3400+ on the Clawhammer and Newcastle cores, as well as the 3500+ on the Newcastle core, run at 2.2Ghz. 200Mhz slower than the 3400+ on socket 754, which runs at 2.4Ghz. I know that doesn't make much sense, but blame AMD's "PR Rating" system. Now in the case of the Clawhammer core 3400+, the only difference is it has 1MB cache. The Newcastle 3500+ is on socket 939 and has dual channel memory controllers. Neither of those things will inrease performance enough to make up for a 200Mhz raw clock rate deficit, and in any case both are more expensive than the Newcastle 3400+ on socket 754. Suffice to say that the socket 754 3400+ is really a "sweet spot" right now. In any case the 3400+ will beat a P4 at 3.4Ghz on many applications, but certainly not all. Both still have their strengths. Athlon 64 is better for games and some rendering applications, particularly those like Terragen and (I believe) Vue Esprit, that are more heavily dependent on traditional floating point performance, whereas the P4 is better in some rendering applications like Lightwave, particularly those that are optimized for SSE2, as well as on a lot of media encoding like Windows Media, etc. So really it's a matter of determining what applications you'll be using most. Another factor is cost, and it can help sway the decision considerably in some cases. The Athlon 64 3400+ costs around $245. A 3.4Ghz P4 starts at $280 on socket 775. Motherboard cost is fairly comparable although an equivalent Athlon 64 motherboard in terms of features will tend to cost a bit less. They have similar cooling requirements, particularly the new Prescott core which runs hotter than the P4 Northwood (Northwood core P4's are more expensive and slightly higher performance). A power supply that will be good for one is good for the other. So really it comes down to the base processor cost, and the Athlon platform, as always, is slightly less expensive. For whatever that's worth. - Oshyan