from the CPU side: athlon 700 is much much faster than P3-550. If you use
some programs that specify to ONLY use P-3 SSE instruction set, the
programs gain performance increase from P3, but AMD will be still faster.
However, when you talk about whole system, there are lot of other issues. I
can list some here, you may need to give more details on these components:
1) which mobo is used (in both system)
2) if graphics performance is important to you (for graphics, games ...),
which video card in used (in both system)
3) which operation system you are going to use, windows 2000 may have
hardware related issues.
4) what programs are you going to use. "bad" designed software can make
good system looks bad, eg. some video driver could work better under Intel
than AMD system (this kind of problem should be fixed when there are update
available).

Personally, I would go for AMD.

Jun Qian

Susan Hays wrote:

> Could someone please tell me which would be a better faster computer: a
> Pentium III 550 or a 700 AMD Athlon?
>
> Thank you,
> Susan Hays
>
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