Apparently the AMD Athlon 64 is the way to go for newest processors, if you're going to go for top of the line. For the Athlon XPs however, the AMD marketing of 2500+ as an equivalent 2.5 GHz P4 is starting to fall apart with the newer P4 CPUs.

Another thing to note is that the whole world is going to change in the next 60 days. That's because there's going to be a push for PCIX which is going to impact both PCI and AGP.

Truth of the matter? I think you're asking the wrong question... ask us what we would suggest for $XXXX, not an open-ended question of what technology we'd suggest. ;)

Parts are pretty cheap now adays. I upgraded my webserver for around $400. For a desktop I'd suggest:

MB: a7n8x[-x] - $137/109 Not sure what's missing on the -X (probably 5.1 sound) but it's a good board that's in A's machine now, built in lan, usb2 and audio.

CPU: xp2500/2700/2800+ - $128/174/190 Depends on where the price point is of course, it's about the xp2800 I though, the price list I'm working off of might be old.

RAM - About $109 or $119 per 512mb stick from what I remember.

So you're looking at $483 low end and 565 high end before taxes.

I was going off of the price list at http://discoverycomputers.com/pricelist.php which is about $10 higher than the stuff from downtown van, but they are local to me. Probably varies a bit out in Ed, but that would be my suggestion. Having a MB with nforce2 is good for desktop/gaming performance, and if you get something like the asus A7N8X-VM ($139) it has built in video which is (and you'll have to confirm this) about a gforce4-mx level, very adequate. For CPU xp2N00+ where N is the price point, and you're kinda stuck as far as ram goes. I dont' know if there's a noticable performance increase between pc2700/pc3200/whatever though.

One more thing... the nforce2 boards have double ddr technology which means if you put in two sticks of ram (ie: 2x512) and put them in the right slots (ie: dimm0 and dimm1 or dimm1 and dimm1 or something) you get increased memory throughput, which is good for games and desktop performance. Not sure if it's noticable beyond benchmarks, but search for it and you'll find more info.

Personally I wouldn't go for amd64 just yet, as the amd64 isn't "true" 64 bit from what I've heard, to get that you have to go to the opertron which is $1k for the cpu alone :)

If what dans says about pcix (dan - where you getting this info?) is true, prices might go down in a month or so, but if you wait a month longer, they'll go down even more, or a month longer.... same as always. I say just do it, you know you're going to get screwed and get an out of date system so just deal with it :)

HTH.

What about the $499 unit here:
http://www.a-computers.ca/cold%20winter.htm

add $200 for a half decent vid card (Radeon 9200 SE) plus a P4 2.8 proc w/ hyperthreading.

Granted, PCIX has been talked about for a long time, and you could wait forever for it. And you know what? Alan is right... you really shouldn't wait. It's why I said you should come out with a dollar figure, so you can get the most for what you can afford... rather than trying to get "wow whee!" item for "just a little bit more cash".

I heard good things about the board Alan suggested, too. In fact, the nforce2 chipset seems to be the way if you go AMD. Unfortunately, if you want equal speed compared to an Intel, it's going to cost you just as much, I've found... if you compare the benchmarks to the prices. (ie.- an Athlon 2800 is about the same performance as a 2.4GHz Intel, and about the same price).

I'm biased towards Intel for the following reasons:
a) Hyperthreading. It's literally like getting an extra 50-80% performance increase in things like Photoshop, which I know you use a lot.
b) There's more support for dual-channel DDR memory in the Intel-chipset motherboards. Like Alan mentioned, it IS faster; I've had the joy of using a machine with it for over a month.
c) Intel CPU and Intel chipset is the best, most compatible combination you can get IMO. Do not go with Via, SiS and Ali chipsets. They are the bastions of hell, made in Taiwan.

...what I DO NOT like about them is their Intel Extreme built-in video on the all-in-one Mobos. It's perfectly adequate for an office and non-3D stuff, though, but I really wouldn't compare it to anything better than a GeForce 2 MX.

So yeah. Don't worry about Athlon 64s, don't worry about PCIX.