If it was me I'd go with the PD, just for the simple fact that it is dual core. Even though the Athlon can beat it in gaming, you can always o/c the PD and it has more cache. Plus dual core is helpfull in a lot of the stuff you said that you will be doing. If you are playing low end games then you won't be pplaying games like Cod2 or Quake 4 anyways. I say Pentium D. I'd take a Dual core > Single core, anyday.