I have never used AMD's before.. But I am considering it seriously this time.I configured two system at Alienware 1. an AMD Athlon 3500+ system (Aurora 7500) and 2. an Intel Pentium 4 processor 550/HT system (Area 51-5550) the Total $'s the same around $2600 with all other configuration like Video card, HD etc very similar.But when I used their "Compare your PC to Alienware" thingi on their site.. This is compare what I am ordering with my old PC (a Dell Pentitum 4 with 2 Ghz). I get a much better perforance boost with option 2. an Intel chip. the Aurora 7500 does better than my old system only marginally.Whats wrong with their math?I don't get it.http://www.alienware.com/Configurator_Page...ode=SKU-DEFAULTvshttp://www.alienware.com/Configurator_Page...=PC-AREA51-5550

I wouldn't base my decision on their tool because maybe they have a financial reason to sell more Intel chips (pure speculation on my part) or the tool just flat does not work as advertised.If you really want to know then you should read the reviews from websites like extremetech.com and tomshardware.com among others. These two websites I mentioned also includes FS9 in the testing benchmarks for CPU's.By the way, for gaming the AMD64 CPU's outperform the Intel's.

I agree 100% with everything said above.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

I may be because the AMD-FX series runs at 2.76GHz... Maybe its cause of that?