Starting a thread which "convinces someone not to buy Intel" is asking for trouble, I'll leave this open for now...but consider this a warning to everyone, if you step out of the line here this will be closed immediately and you will be warned
Also the Athlon 64 can run 64 bit software and 32 bit software so you get more.
The 3.2 GHZ P4's start at $215 and are slower and don't support 64 bit. They have the 640 for $270 which is still beat by a $190 Athlon 3200. and for $267 you can have the 3500!