just af ew things i've picked up
dagger, your Celeron would be CRUSHED by my AMD, which cost $94, and will crush $150 Intel chips, and with about $200 in cooling, would crush $200-$350 Intel chips (and compete with $500+ chips)
seconldy
AMD may run slower in clock speed, but considering an Athlon64 3200+ costs under $200, a Pentium 4 3.2GHZ costs $220-ish, and the A64 will WIPE THE FLOOR with the P4 in all gaming applications, AND in most other applications
Intel is in #2, for the money AMD can't be beat
if Athlon64 cost identical to Intel's chips, or more, yes, Intel would make more sense
but AMD chips cost about $30-$40 less
the real price gap appears when you start getting into the 3.6GHZ+ Intel chips
which are expensive to produce (read: Intel has low yields) $650 for a CPU (570J) which will get SMASHED TO PIECES by a $350-ish 3800+...so I completly understand how Intel is so much better and cheaper
also, those pakistani's (weirdest staistic ever, like, Pakistan, it's just random, are you from there? (just wondering, i'm not saying their not technologically advanced or anything, it's just rather random that Pakistan is the statistic...))
their choosing Celeron based on it's clock
your averge user would think an FX-55 is equal to a 2.66D
that FX-55 will kill ANYTHING Intel can offer (including the dual core 840 EE chip)
the reason Dell hasn't moved to AMD is AMD's capacity (this is quoted from some Dell exec) they say their going AMD just to squeeze Intel
if Dell started shipping AMD chips also, AMD would have more than ample money to produce enough fabs to keep up in CPU's
while Intel has 20 some odd fabs, only 3-5 produce CPU's (Intel is the world leader in graphics processors, by volume, they also produce all of those chipsets, and flash RAM/ROM products)
but Dell's word is that AMD does not have the current capacity to take even 20% of their sales
if they went AMD their projection shows AMD would withdraw from all markets, devote themselves entirely to Dell, and still fall about 50% short of what they'd need (the removal is that AMD would be that streched)
Hewlett Packard uses AMD in their desktops, AND servers
Sun Microsystems uses AMD in their non-SPARC servers
Compaq uses AMD in their desktops
and I believe AMD is avliable in some IBM servers
AMD is used in a lot of server applications, as Opteron is just that good, and Sempron and AthlonXP are good performance for the money...
making the claim that your Celeron 2.6GHZ and Radeon 9600 can smash higher end CPU's and systems (this is at dagger) is rather insane
my system would fit into the "higher end and top shelf systems" class (only because of my graphics and sound cards, my motherboard is top shelf, but it's AthlonXP)
and my computer would whip yours, easily
in gaming the CPU doesn't determine much
i'll use my two computers for example here...
I have two CPU's avliable to me
my AthlonXP 3200+ (Which i'm currently using right now)
and my Pentium 4 2GHZ (Willamette, and it's not being used at the moment)
I have two graphics adapters avliable to me also, my GeForce 6800GT 256MB and my GeForce FX 5900XT 128MB (well, I also have a few value level AGP cards, and some PCI cards, and an old 3dfx Voodoo2 12MB, but i'm just talking recent generation stuff)
now my Pentium 4 and 5900XT would obviously make the smartest pair for a second computer (over one of my 16, 32 or 64MB cards)
if I were to put the 5900XT + AthlonXP together
and the 6800GT + Pentium 4 together
the Pentium 4 would win, by a huge margin, and would still anhilate you in gaming performance
in gaming the graphics card is all that matters, assuming the CPU is 1.8GHZ or higher
I know plenty of people with CPU's on the slow side, who have a decent graphics chip in their system, and their gaming performance is just flat out amazing considering the rest of their machine
i'm not saying sticking an AthlonXP 1400+ with an X850XT Plat. E or something like that is logical
but i am saying that in gaming that system (XP 1400/X850XT PE) would be more than capable of most games
it would be rather pointless for anything else though
if the CPU is 1.8GHZ or faster/equivalent to 1.8GHZ
if the graphics card is able, the gaming is perfect
my CPU is considered outdated, and it's using a "dead" platform
it's 2.2GHZ
equivalent to a 2.8GHZ Pentium 4 Prescott (with HT)
now your claim that AMD is so slow that it can't keep up
it's entirely bogus
my chip can and does keep up with the best of them
most people I know have Intel, excluding that my graphics card has 4x the pipes, 2-3x the vertex units, twice the bus interface, and 2-4x the RAM
my CPU still competes and beats them
a Celeron isn't anything amazing
a Celeron D isn't really either...it's more capable but, not amazing
your CPU is fine for gaming, but if you had identical specs to my machine, excluding the CPU
mine would always have about 2 FPS lead on yours (that is how little it matters between CPU's, I run about 300 under in 3D03 over a THG bench using a $500 Athlon64 4000+, in 3D05 however I fall short by about 600 due to my chip's issues with software 3D (but I seriously would shoot myself if I tried to run a game like Half-Life 2 in software 3D (that's where the gfx card does essentially nothing...))
AMD's are excellent for anything you can do with a computer, and provide more than enough power
while an Intel would be nice
consider this
most performance tweakers, serious gamers, and OC'ers alike with Pentium 4's run them at 4GHZ, and they are competitve with 2.5-2.7GHZ AMD64's, and 2.8-3.0GHZ AMD AthlonXP's (yes, 3GHZ is possible on an AthlonXP, albiet hard, still very possible)
i'm just saying that AMD isn't as weak as you'd like them to be
your Celeron couldn't anhilate ANY of AMD's Athlon64 line (with the exception of possibly the very rare Mobile series chips released at it's inital launch (like A64 2500+'s, which were just amazingly slow (hence their month long retail life))
the slowest Athlon64 is the 2800+
which is around a 2.8-3.0GHZ Pentium 4 (about equivalent to my CPU)
slow P4's might be killable
but comparable P4's to Athlon64's (2.8's and above)
they would just kill your chip
the Celeron is a cut down Pentium 4
it's a Pentium 4 which lacks HT, and has less cache (Which does affect your performance)
i'm not trying to cut down your rig
i'm just trying to let you know what it'd compare to...
now if you wanna come back and tell me my rig probably cost twice as much as yours, and that in terms of what they can play/do, yours is equivalant (in that you can play all the games I can) i'll tell you your right, but wrong
it cost more actually (for the total cost of you CPU, I could get a portion of my display set-up (3 monitors when completed later this summer, $300 for the 6800GT alone, $160 for the main mointor, around $140 for the secondaries, and around $40 for the other video card)
but i'll tell you (just as something you'll discover eventually) i've been in your shoes, and had the "i've spent under $1000 and can play any game, i'm happy" position
and it's not bad to be in that position
but once you get to game on a machine that not only runs the game, but runs the game at any resolution, and quality setting, a machine where you can just set the settings as high as the monitor can take you, as high as the speakers can take it, and it still runs at 40 FPS+, you'll never go back to the value build mentality (at least not easily)
well, that's just my comments/thoughts on this