<< if you mention P4 around here you are doomed >>
Actually, if this is mostly an AMD crowd, I honestly had no idea. I've been trying to get responses from various newsgroups and other forums, but here, on Anand's forums is by far the most advice I have received.
Again, I thank everyone.
My decision is very heavily weighing to AMD now.
Price is an issue to me. The motherboards and ram are more expensive with the p4. And as long as the AMD chip is solid and won't burn up anytime soon, then I can see myself being happy with AMD. I'm not an overclocker, and I try to keep the minimal amount of hardware/software in/running on my setup. So, I don't see me having a problem.
As far as motherboards go...I hadn't heard of EPOX until it was mentioned here. I frequent Anand's page and Tom's hardware for reviews and neither of them have reviewed the 8k7a board yet. Anand really states that Asus is a stable board manufacturer. I have owned one Asus in the past for my p2-300, 3 years ago. and I do have to say it was the best board I had owned. I never had a single problem with it in the time I was running it. My brother has it now and it it still performing like when I first bought it.
Can EPOX be compared to that? If so, I will seriously consider it.
Until I buy something, I'll keep reading this thread!