Hey His,
The Pentium D runs hot, churns through a lot of electricity, and while a succsessful chip, it is done, put a fork in it; it would be like buying a 1950s one speed steeel frame bicycle when you can get multiple gears, a carbon frame, etc.
AMD versus Intel: while we are at it, let's solve North Versus South, East versus West, cats versus dogs, etc.....
Intel is the bigger company; they went through a rough time with the Pentium D class of chips: AMD had a much better architecture, that ran better and cooler--so, Intel created the Core series of processors that are fast, efficient, and reasonably priced.
Note: many people say we would still be using $400 1 GHz Pentium IIIs from Intel were it not for competition from AMD. Intel has a boatload of research money, i.e. they have engineers working on making the chips better, faster, smaller, cheaper--
OK, Intel's research budget: 4.8 billion dollars.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c...113724_intellab09.html
AMD's annual R&D budget is substantial for a company of its size, but it is dwarfed by Intel's outlay. In 2006, AMD spent $1.2 billion on R&D, representing a hefty 21 percent of its $5.7 billion revenue for the year.
http://www.industrialcontrolde...ine.com/news/199905476
So, AMDs TOTAL yearly budget is just a bit bigger than Intel's research budget.
However, the Yankees baseball payroll is huge--but they don't always win.
Anyway, the Intel Core 2 Duo you are looking at is a fine chip--you cannot go wrong getting it.
The AMD lineup right now is also excellent, in the mid to low price arena, which is where you are looking. AMD needs to sell chips to survive, and in order to survive, they have lowered prices--their socket AM2 chips are a great bargain. And yes, they run Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris....they have (essentially) the same instructions inside, and so run the software fine.
Personally, I like the way AMD heatsink/fans attach to the motherboard, the old style, as oppsoed to the Intel lunar lander 4 prong system--and, I like AMD for price/performance.
I have built some systems for friends using AMD 65 watt (low power) CPUs, and motherboards with the nVidia 7025 chipset: cheap, powerful enough for office work/web surfing/light gaming,
quiet because they use so little power--in a cool room, sometimes the fans don't even need to run on the CPU fan, and when it does, it turns at like 700-800 RPM....silent.
Here are some CPUs from the low to mid end: you can pick any one of these and do 100% fine:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...2c3028%3a25342&bop=And
Then, great: you can decide between ATI/AMD and nVidia graphics--what software you want to run will dictate that, i.e. games versus office stuff. (On baord graphics for office stuff, and I would recommend an nVidia card for games, set your budget then pick the one that fits.)
Let's see, did we leave anyone out of this AMD versus Intel Jihad? Soccer teams in England and Germany, Cricket teams in India, Kobe versus Shaq?
HTH
NXIL