System A or System B?

[Ericular]

Which would you rather have, and why?

Same price:

Intel P4 540J w/HT 3.2GHz
512MB DDR PC3200 RAM (2 DIMM)
128MB DDR ATI Radeon X300 SE

OR

AMD Athlon 64 3400+ operating at 2.4GHz
512MB DDR PC3200 RAM (1 DIMM)
256MB DDR nVidia GeForceFX 5500

For a wide-variety of uses. I guess the most CPU intensive things done on it would be digital image processing and the occasional game of Madden.

Not too familiar with how the two will compare, never owned an AMD.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Major_A]

B, but don't think that FX5500 with 256MB is going to be any better than a 5500 with 128MB of RAM.

 

[acetic]

B, but don't think that FX5500 with 256MB is going to be any better than a 5500 with 128MB of RAM.

I second B. That system will definitely out-perform the P4 based system. I agree with Major, you might see some performance, but its likely they use slower RAM in the 256MB version to keep prices down, so it could end up being slower.

 

[4keatimj]

Actually, system A would be better for what you wanted to do. Granted, the A64 is a model faster than the P4, but the P4 is reknowned for being better at digital image processing than the AMDs. The A64 would be better for gaming, but the P4 is much better for working with digital images and video.

 

[Wrench00]

get a 6600 vanila they are cheap. Great cards.. The 6200 TC (OC like mad xtremesystems.org had a thread on these.)cards are pretty swanky as well. If I were you I wouldn't go for the fx card.

I would try and get a nf4 board with pcie, there are some cheap ones on new egg.