larva said:
You will likely be dissapointed then. A64s have a host of advantages, multitasking is not one of them.
Larva, please elaborate upon what you are saying here. You do not even know what applications this person is mutlitasking within, so I find it difficult to see how you can come to that prediction that his performance will be bad enough that it will disappoint him.
I am currently running on a 1.5ghz pally, and I can tell you that my multitasking is not "dissappointing", so I think a general statement like I just quoted is probably misdirected more often than its accurate. If my old pally does well with photoshop, websurfing, folding, and multimedia all at the same time, I harshly doubt that the multitasking experience on an A64 is going to be disappointing.
Now, clearly benchmarks have repeatedly shown that intel is superior in this area, however for many users I doubt they even use their PC the majority of the time in the sort of way where the Intel multitasking advantage would be readily evident... The advantage would be there, but i believe both sides have high end processors which would keep 99% of people from being disappointed. And surely, no matter which side anyone chooses, unless they have the oppurtunity to make atleast a somewhat direct comparison, no one will end up disappointed.
Consider this - would you be willing to take a double blind test on a series of Intel and AMD machines, while multitasking, and you had to guess which was which? I know I wouldn't be comfortable with my choices, and I use both platforms on a daily basis.