I just upgraded to an AMD 1.1g chip, 512 megs dram, a 133 board, power supply, cpu fan and a case all for $720. Dirt cheap plus it runs damn fast. I haven't compared it to a P3 of similar layout but for the price I'm very happy. Here's an example render: 12 people with clothes and accessories (about 36 figures total including shoes, shirts, pants), a bank with walls, desk, chairs cabinets, windows doors (about 40 various wall parts and about 20 pieces of furniture). An outside street with 4 cars, three large building models, fire hydrants, lamp posts, street mesh. This all rotates around with the camera spinner at real time in textured preview mode with only one or two hiccups. A 480x480 frame renders in about 30 to a minute including 2 lights at 1024 density with everyone on screen and antialias turned on. Yes, you can code for Pentium chip sets. MSDev has switches for this. It all depends on how the compiler arranges the code for the pipeline. If it knows its going on a pentium then the pipeline layout can be different than an AMD. In any event, you will pay more for a pentium. It maybe faster but I don't know if its worth the price upgrade. If you're not squeamish about putting your own system together I'd go the motherboard/cpu route. I got the v133 board. They make a 266 board but the v133 gets a great review. Plus I can upgrade my processor when I need to instead of buying a whole new machine.