It eventually kicked the bucket and was replaced with a Sempron 2800+ and a Biostar M7VIG with a gig of cheap RAM and (the only real flaw) a Radeon 9250. Incredible compared to the Duron and its onboard video, but still no rocket ship. I upgraded that machine one piece at a time, replacing the slow, then dead, POS Seagate 80GB with a WD 160, then the motherboard (to a proper nForce2 Epox 8RDA3IPro), a new video card (x1600Pro) and power supply (420w Enermax, as the 300w CWT [Antec] was running a bit warm), and finally some better RAM and a new CPU, an unlocked low-voltage 2500+ Barton-core XP.

That machine taught me many things, through my adventures in overclocking, ghetto-ass cooling overkill, and countless case transplants. And even after it got flaky and ended up shelved, it eventually donated some of its parts (case, PSU, combo drive) after my friend gave me two-thirds of his old system last year.

At the time I built my new system, shortly before my friend gave me most of his, Intel still didn't have an affordable Core Duo solution. So I recommended a then-new AM2 setup to a friend of mine. He assumed his first CPU was DOA after the machine failed to POST; it turned out to be a dead motherboard, and he had a second CPU. Since he had a terrible 15" CRT at the time, and I was running dual 21"s that I'd gotten cheaply off of Craigslist, he offered to trade me this chip, a 3500+ single-core, for a decent 17" CRT I'd gotten for free.

I knew a good deal when I saw one, though I didn't end up building the system for another year afterward (and, after buying all the parts - nF570 Leadtek, Radeon x1950Pro, and a couple gigs of RAM, all of which were dirt cheap after MIR - I broke off a pin installing that CPU, but it worked fine anyway). I eventually traded that chip to a friend of mine who was downgrading a computer from his mother's work to XP Pro from Vista; got the 4400+ it had in it, and that's what I'm running to date.

However, my other two machines are Intel - the 3.2 P4 box (half of which I got from that friend, the case/PSU/drives I had, and the CPU I was able to steal from school) and my grandmother's Core Duo Dell laptop, which was given to me after she passed away.

I can't speak ill of the Cores. Mine's great. The P4's hot but seems quick enough (his was also a 3.2 and, with a 6600 PCIe, kept up with my 2500@3200/x1600Pro) for what it is.

tl;dr: I'm an AMD guy, but I can go either way quite happily. I'm here for the cheap thrills.

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They consistently keep Intel honest by providing serious price/performance competition, so that as consumers we don't get raped by Intel. Intel has a horrible track record when it comes to monopolistic practices and honest product competition. If AMD ever falls, it's quite possibly the worst thing that could ever happen for PC hobbyists.

Before AMD was a serious contender in the race with the Athlon, intel was charging $400-$600 for their midrange P3 chips. Today I can get a supercomputer like Phenom II Quad core chip for $200.

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