Currently have three computers at home... All are AMDs with MSI mobos that I've assembled... Of course my higher end computer I use for my 2D/3D stuff...It currently is an AMD XP 2500 (Barton) with 1 gig of memory... Right now there two candidates of cpu/mobos within my budget... One is the AMD A64 3200 the other is the Pentium D 805... The A64 has a faster clock speed but the D 805 is dual core... I also realize I may have to replace my ram (DDR) and video card (AGP)... Any thoughts??? I may post this in the Paint Shop and Vue forums as those are the packages I mostly use... Cheers Ken

I've been a tek for a while, I recommend to my customers to go with AMD all the time, I would use no other, In my opinion and experience the are the superior chip. My rig is a MSI mobo, 1 gig DDR 400, 1 x 80GB Maxtor SATA, 1 x 80GB Maxtor ATA & 256MB PCI Express Radeon X550 Video Card, AMD 64 Sempron 1.81GHz CPU..but I also increase my paging file on both hard drives to sqeeeeeeza a bit extra virtual ram ;) but to be honest MSI mobo & AMD chip is what I would go for if I were in your predicament ;) Hope this helps White Rabbit

I suggest an AMD X2 core based PC -- about an X2 4200. It costs about the same as the lower-end Intel based dual core PCs, but is about 25% faster in rendering speed. BTW, I'm presently using 2 Intel based 830 dual core PCs for my render farm -- I don't have any particular biases (I got a good deal on a couple of Gateway refurbs).

The AMD X2 3800 costs about $390.00 (Canadian) while I can get the Intel Pentium D 805 for under $200.00... My last Intel was a P166... Currrenly all three of my rigs are AMD powered. But it appears Intel is getting aggressive with their lowerend dual cores... P D805 - presently on sale for $149.00 (Canadian) http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=17710&vpn=BX80551PE2666FN%20&manufacture=Intel AMD X2 3800 - $390.00 Canadian http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=15708&vpn=ADA3800BVBOX&manufacture=AMD

Also - does Vue take advantage of dual core cpus???

Quote - "Also - does Vue take advantage of dual core cpus???"

Yes it does. Vue5 IS multithreaded. Multicore or SMP (multi-CPU) is definately what you should be looking for. The AMD's are currently the "better" chip for sure.

Attached Link: At Hardware.FR

Thats funny I just built a dual core AMD for a friend, so just to see how it compared against my Intel 3.8 I ran the same scene on both machines. Claims of 25% are way off more like 2%, I then ran some scenes that take a couple of hours to generate. This is where the Intel machine came out on top it won by a good 5%, dont always believe the hype.

Quote - "Thats funny I just built a dual core AMD for a friend, so just to see how it compared against my Intel 3.8 I ran the same scene on both machines. Claims of 25% are way off more like 2%, I then ran some scenes that take a couple of hours to generate. This is where the Intel machine came out on top it won by a good 5%, dont always believe the hype."

Wow... I find that a little surprising...

Attached Link: Low price dual cores