Well, personally, I'd be inclined to go for Tom's Hardware Guides, but if I'm gonna be spending some more money on my move from Apple I'd like to be 100% sure.

Most places I've been reading have done numerous processor comparisons lately between Intel and AMD, esp the likes of the Intel 5x0e range and AMD's 3x00+ socket 939 range. Now looking at Tom's results, the AMD's fair reasonably well among the Intel, however in other reviews I've read elsewhere, they quote Video Encoding as being AMD 64's Achille's heel.

One magazine review had hardly any mid range AMD 64's anywhere in the TMPGEnc MPEG-2 Encoding chart, with the Intel 4e 560 with a score (I can only assume being Xrealtime) of 1.76 being the top and the AMD Athalon 64 3500+ Socket 939 coming in 15th placfe with a result of 1.18.

At present, I'm encoding at between .19 and .30 x realtime depending on what I'm encoding and obviously this would be a good leap and would improve my overall productivity, however, I'm assuming AMD 64 are more futureproof than Intel, but am getting all the more confused as to what to go for.

At first, I had my mind set on an Intel system, then I read a few reviews, a few things Tom's Hardware had on, and opted for an AMD64 939 setup, and now I'm baffled again.

Can someone help me pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase.