Well I've only ever had an Intel chip once, never again, IMO , AMD make the best, Intel had awfull probs with overheating years ago cos they tried to match the speed of AMD chips, since then I've stuck with them.

I remember Intel marketing their first Pentium, it was so bad they had humungus fans blasting air on it to keep it cool.

Intel are the first to launch the quad processor, it's on the market now, but I'll bide my time and see what AMD has, it's due to be launched in Jan.

The worst case I had the misfortune of working with was an old AST base unit type, to get inside you needed a degree in engineering, and when in you were left with 5 different sections which were then a nightmare putting back together.

I'm sure you will find that AMD have mostly played catchup to Intel over the years, and most of their processors required a higher voltage which generated more heat and required more cooling than Intel cpu's.
I've built AMD systems for myself and others in the past, but switched over to Intel myself for a more stable system for multimedia applications (audio/video editing). As of now, Intel high-end cpu's are far superior to anything AMD has.

I have always been of the opinion, If you want quality and money not really an object, go for intel, If you are on a budget and want a cpu that will do for your needs go for amd, I have used both and dont have a preference either way.

Hi Phil - Just want to say that if you want to take advice "from someone in the know" - you couldn't get anyone more "in the know" than DJ. He has all the qualification certificates concerning pc's, from college's and courses. He's been in the "Know" since the early 80's, and coninues to be so. He built me my pcs, has upgraded my pcs and a hundreds of others - advised and even taught. I am positive if you follow his response/advice you can't go wrong.

ummm thanks for that Rose I'll give you that tenner later
didnt expect that lol how did you know all of that anyway?

Phill that's not too bad a spec - my last pc had 256MB of ram!!! (you have 4times that )

If you are planning on keeping the pc for at least 2 years then I'd get an internal drive - the extra cache will make a lot of difference. Also, with any money saved I'd upgrade my ram.

Thirdly, I'd do a clean install of windows to wipe off all the rubbish that piles onto them over the years... and it'll all feel nice and new, and fast too!

What graphics card do you have btw? If it's onboard, you could get a cheap dedicated card which should also help a little.

Hi Phil, I've been too busy to visit the forum for a few days so hope I'm not too late to contribute now. I can highly recommend Western Digital external drives I have now got 4 in full time use and one is a massive 1 terabyte. They are ultra reliable and consistently get great reviews in both the Mac and PC press.

Whilst on about hard drives, I would never ever buy a Maxtor again. I have had 5, yes 5 fail on me in hot weather and all had the same dreaded clicking sound, which is the heads smashing down onto the discs. The best data recovery firm in GB is also one of my clients and even they couldn't retrieve the lost data. The nightmare was the last time it happened one drive failed so I started backing the other one up and that failed during the process. So my double backup was of no use and I lost masses of work, with repercussions that still pop up from time to time.

OK rant over!!