Any of my friends who know my know that what I'm about to say is rather out of character, but I have to give the Athlon its due. I will bash neither company's processor from now on, I will just continue to use Intel products. Regarding the P4. Actually, it is a model of smart design and careful consideration of where the industry as a whole is headed. Why? Well, look at the benchmarks (refering to TOM's especially). Benchmarks that run lots of standard x86 code get beaten by the T-bird. However, Intel, and I think all of us know in out hearts, do we REALLY NEED current software to go much faster. With the exception of Video editing software and games, nothing REALLY takes advantage of the extra clockspeed added to the Coppermine and T-bird in the last year. I think Intel took that into account with P4. I think they are forcing the programers to start REALLY taking advantage of processor architectures in their code, and to come up with better, newer compilers. In the tom's benchmark for instance, Intel went back and recompile FLASK and even the T-bird performed better. Even though I'm an intel supporter (hey, we need SOMEONE to lead, don't we, but I've bitched about their pricing like everyone else here) I think we need to understand that Intel is first and foremost at the mercy of their stockholders. They made record profits last year, in spite of Processor shortages, the i820 scandal, and Athlon marketshare. They did that with higher prices. You all saw what happened when they said that they were going to be off by all of 3 percent. THAT is the reason why they don't price themselves like AMD unless forced to (Like now), they have to make a profit large enough to satisfy their shareholders. Their pricing for instance, is the reason why two days ago, I just built two 700 T-bird systems for friends really cheap. I however, am going to go to a P3 933 with the new price drop. So, I disagree with NOS's blind distortion of reality, but I also take issue with many people's blind devotion to AMD. Hate Intel because of their pricing if you want, but give each company props when they deserve it. The P4 is a damn good design waiting for software...that's a fact. Athlon is doing exactly what AMD needed it to do: match or beat Intel enough to get them Market share WITH OEM's. Even though I'm quite sure that AMD loves what we in the geek community have to say about it, they're even more happy when an OEM orders another 2000 processors. So, to everyone here, give Intel a break. They're NOT stupid, they're in this to MAKE MONEY and to LEAD THE INDUSTRY, and give credit to Athlon for doing what it does, MAKE INTEL CONTINUE TO LEAD and work the software companies, so that BOTH companies make better products for us all. SOrry for the long post...but I hope it helps...