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what does 3200 correspond to in intel? what does 3500 correspond to?
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welcome in the wonderful world of "PR ratings"
anyone correct me but the "inofficial" explanation is of course that the PR number is compared to a Pentium 4 running at those said mhz.
AMD will of course deny....nevertheless...
HOWEVER..all you have to know is that the current AMD CPUs, A64 3200 and 3500 are super fast and (as benchmarks show) are faster than the currently fastest Intel CPUs. NOT ALWAYS....but in some areas, like gaming.
The 3200 is not really a bottleneck since the real difference in speed to the 3500 is negelctible. Especially if you ever gonna overclock it doesnt matter whether you get 3200 or 3500...the CPUs itself can hit anything from 2500 to 2700 mhz thus far exceeding their original/rated speeds. (For the 3200 that is 2ghz, for the 3500 2.2Ghz)
Edit: And yes, if you do NOT chose the overclocking route and expensive overclocker's memory...still get the 3200 and put the saved money toward a good video card. The advantage in real "life" is much higher than a BIT faster CPU but a crappy video card.