Sooo...

I should spend £350 extra to get a P4 extreme edition at 3.2GHz rather than just £300 on an Athlon 64 3400+ with 1.5GB PC3200 kingston RAM?

It just doesn't seem sensible, especially from the performance Athlon 64s are supposed to deliver.

I personally use athlons and have only had trouble when the heatsink I had was insufficient when I upgraded my processor, no harm done, just meant I had to get a better heatsink for a whopping £10..

So I know that Athlon XPs work fine, although above the Athlon 2800+ I'm skeptical. The Athlon 64s are supposed to remedy this shortfall in the old XP series.

One final note, just because I see it so often and it annoys me - there is only 1 "A" in "Athlon" - not Athalon or anything else.

You'd be the same if both your parents had been teachers..