New Computer.

Howdy, I'm about to upgrade my main computer (gaming / programming) and I'm upgrading from a 1.2/3 ghz athlon (thunderbird I think). I've got to upgrade my motherboard and processor as well as GPU and RAM... Oye!

Thing is I cannot decide Intel or AMD? ATI or Nvidia?
I looked for benchmarks since I want the most power I can get but I didn't get much outta my search.

What do you other people prefer?
I was thinking the Core2 Duo but someone I know said that they like to break and that the AMD equivalents are faster by far. Any input would be appreciated. I do a lot of gaming and programing.

the Core2Duo is the fastest, cheapest, and best CPU at overclocking out there today, so i would say you have no choice in CPU, get the fastest Core 2 Duo you can afford and overclock it at least 15%, AMD was the best choice before the Core 2 Duo, but when the Core 2 Duo came out it just blew everything AMD away (a $300 intel can beat a $800 AMD across the board, and thats not even close to the best from Intel)

as for the video card, it is really a matter of how much money, but as for the fastest today, that would be the Geforce 8800GTX, but it goes for $600, if your going for something slower then that then you could look at toms hardware as they just put up a list of the best card for every price range, if it was me buying the card i would stick to nVidia cards as i use Linux and if you ever want to try out Linux in the near future you will find that an ATI cards will give you many times the pain then a nVidia card, ATI can't seem to make a decent Linux driver at all, while nVidia has one that just works and it looks like a working open source one suitable for most 3D stuff should be out in a year or two