No one's mentioned one of the most important things, 64 bit cpus, the athlon 64s romp all over the p4s and will do even more so if you try a 64 bit operating system (a windows beta is out but not full product - Linux rocks (but there again won't run Bryce (hint hint DAZ...)) you will not get better value for money then from an AMD cpu, if you're mum can't stretch to an Athlon 64, then get an athlon 64 mobo and the sempron 3100 - you can pick one up for less then 70 ($100 ish) and they rock. The down side to AMD XP chips is heat, make sure you buy a decent heatsink...... (and some arctic silver).

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