[darkpuppet]

Frenchy does have a point tho.. AMD can be fussy little machines. And the AMD 64 platform didn't do so well with 3d Graphics software written for Intel use.

Especially considering that rendering uses more CPU cycles and instruction pathing that you'd NEVER use for folding at home. It's akin to the problems graphics cards had when doom 3 first came out, it was just using parts of the chip that were never stressed to that extent before.

Generally, I find builders less receptive to AMD merely for the fact that they can't use the same combination of parts they'd be able to toss in an Intel machine. Performance be damned, how many people know about registered memory modules?

AMD vs Intel is similar to Windows vs Linux. One may be technically better, but one is definitely NOT as user friendly as the other. AMD is a bit more bleeding edge than Intel, but you pay for it if you don't research your high-end workstation thoroughly.

I'd recommend in this case to go with the AMD socket 939 dual core processor. You should still be able to get core upgrades down the road for it.

PCI express and SATA are obvious things in the next gen, and I may even suggest an ATI cross-fire capable card for doubling performance down the road.

But to be honest, I'm not one to go too far into processor names or CAS timings with people, as there's more to overall performance than picking the highest clock speeds and lowest latencies.