[keithwalton]

To clear a few things up ...

Prescott is due for release feb 2nd and shall be in stock in most places by then, distributer networks have them already! the more info doesnt work as it doesnt exist yet on the intel site, the EE is its closest match although its 1mb of cache and 90nm process

Clock for clock there marginally slower in some things vs northwood and then faster in others. Its quite close speed wise.
The price though is looking very good unlike there competitors atm.

Athlon 64 is very similar to the athlon xp. somthing like 80% of the core is the same, with more cache, basic 64bit support and integrated memory controller being the only difference.

Why buy intel - Hyperthreading (cant live without it now), runs at the speed said on the box, reliability, compatibility (mines overclocked shed loads and still no crash / bsd / anything stopping from working in what 8 months, couldnt say that for 8 hours or my amd/via setup)

Why not buy amd - only supported architecture under mainstream os (as in windows lets face it who willingly uses *nix as there main os) is outdated, 64bit support is very sketchy and not really showing much advantages yet, only decent performing one is the fx51 and that costs a bomb even more than the extreme edition. silly pr ranking system thats complete tosh, for starters they've called 3 different chips a 2600+ neither of them are as fast as a P4 2.4C nevermind a 2.6C and there performance is widespread and allover the place there hardly equivelent to each other.

On another note the Opeteron / Athlon 64 is in a completly different market secter to the Intel Intanium which when compared the intanium 2 whipes the flaw with the amd chip.

In my opinion its best you wait a few weeks at least for the pres'y to be released and then pulled apart to see if its worth getting.

K