True. It's in Dell, Gateway etc but I'll bet they only pay half that $719. If you build your own you would be a fool to pay for the best Intel. I have two home built AMD computers. I will upgrade one with the 2100+ Athlon (~$87) which will be more than enough for my purposes
"My AMD XP2000 kicks the stuffing out of most Intels up to 2.3GHz. (it runs a modest 1.81 GHz)
The old Intel/AMD numbers games.
Tell you the truth ~ I had a really nice 1GHz AMD I built last year with 512mb SDram. So, I got a bit of cash back from the IRS, and built this new one. 1.53GHz / 512mb DDRram running the fastest mem settings in the BIOS.
REAL WORLD DIFFERENCE? It took me 23 minutes to install WinXP Pro on my new one. It took 24 minutes to install it on the 'old' one.
Personally, if I were to build right now, I'd get an Epox motherboard, at least 512 megs of fast solid ram, and an AMD XP2000 [co-incidentally, that's what I DO have now) or (if I were going to be bleeding edge) an XP2700 on a new 333MHz board. Again, the speed difference is neglible, but at least I'd be cutting edge.
Once we reached the 1GHz mark, it seems the actual speed increase became more 'on paper', as in, SiSoft, 3DMarks, PCMarks benchmark results. I have pages of them from my own system. According to the numbers, I'm flying. According to realworld ~ It's ok. FreeCell disappears after the last card is played, that's all I care about. hehe."