Alright let's settle this once and for all. I've been running benchmarks on both platforms side by side:

- P4 1.8GHz on i845 chipset
- Athlon XP 1800+ on KT266A

Both with 512MB DDR, same GeForce3. Results: Athlon XP wins gaming by 5-15%. P4 wins video encoding and Photoshop filters. For the money the Athlon XP is the clear winner for most people.

Fight me.

These results line up with what Anandtech published. The Athlon XP is just the better gaming chip right now. Intel needs to sort out the Pentium 4's pipeline issues.

The P4 will get better as software is optimized for its architecture. Right now most software is still designed for shorter pipeline CPUs like the Athlon.

I went Athlon XP 1900+ and I'm extremely happy. The KT266A motherboards from Asus are rock solid too.

P4 all the way. Rambus RDRAM is the real bottleneck — once DDR support matures, the P4 will pull ahead.