Help with Processors? Athlon V Pentium 4

Looking at a spec for a new PC (dell) at the moment. Dell have a couple of interesting budget machines on offer -one has a Pentium 4, the other an Athlon.

My inclination is toward the Pentium 4 but the other ones got bigger Hard drive etc...

what does anyone reckon?

Here's the specs sure

Machine 1:
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 531 (3.00GHz, 800MHz, 1MB Cache)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
16x DVD+/-RW Drive
17" Analogue Flat Panel Monitor (17.0" v.i.s)
Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator 900
Hard Drive - Now 160GB (Was 80GB)
2 DAYS LEFT!
Memory - Now 1024MB (Was 512MB)
Due to End 01/11/2006


Machine 2:
DimensionTM C521

AMD® AthlonTM 64 processor 3200+
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
16x DVD+/-RW Drive
17" Analogue Flat Panel Monitor (17.0" v.i.s)
128MB PCI Express ATI X1300
Hard Drive - Now 250GB (Was 160GB)
2 DAYS LEFT!
Introductory Offer - FREE Double Memory
Due to End 01/11/2006.

Depends really on what you want to use it for Lionel. For the run of the mill stuff, they are as good as eachother imo.

The Intel one has 1GB of RAM but the other one only says "FREE Double Memory."
It's 6 of one, half dozen of the other.

horses for courses, again if you want it as a games machines you should go with the athlon, if you don't want it for games, then either are good enough.

The first machine has Media Edition of XP- which is going to be great if you want to use it as a living room machine to play movie and stream audio and so on.

The second has a far better graphics card and should probably therefore be the better for gaming- the first one probably doesn't even have a PCI Express slot so can't be really upgraded in the graphics department.

I'd definately go for the second, unless you really want Media Center.