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In the era of the PIII, flipping a coin was a fair way to choose. Now, we can actually see a difference, as far as NLEs are concerned. If you still have a single-PIII system, moving up now makes sense. A couple of test labs have reported substantial performance boosts using the Athlon XP over P4 -- single CPU, that is. So if you already have a mobo that can take the 1.6 GHz Athlon, it's an easy call. If you have dual-processor system, sinking money upgrading to Athlon MP over a dual PIII 1 GHz may not be so clear cut, from a ROI viewpoint. There will be some performance gain, but a correspondingly expensive cash drain since your getting new CPU, motherboard and memory.
Either way, getting the fastest components your motherboard can support does make sense. If you already own dual 700 MHz PIIIs and 512 MB in PC100 SDRAM, and your mobo accepts 133 MHz SDRAM and 1.1 GHz PIII CPUs, plunking down $500 will most likely give you much shorter renders. Mind you, it won't give you more real time layers, but shorter wait times means trying more things. And you can keep the rest of your state-of-the-art a 'la 1998 system, and upgrade when Athlon MP 1.9GHz or P4 Xeons are cheap. Small steps, Ellie.
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