building a computer

Alright, Im building myself a new computer and I needed a place to ask all my questions. I want my computer to play games and to do a bit of 3d modeling with 3ds max.

My first question is what is currently the better choice, Intel or AMD? All I find when Google it is from 2007 and earlier.

 

Little bit more info, Counter Strike Source or Call of Duty, really heavy stuff or light stuff, etc etc, basically is it real high end stuff or not that high end??? Whats your budget, what where your initial thoughts??

 

It really boils down to a matter of opinion.

A lot of the people on the other forums I belong to have been building AMD Phenom 4X quad core units simply because they are less expensive then Intel.

My stance is you get what you pay for.

My personal choice for a reasonable price build would be a Gigabyte EP45-UD3R motherboard, E8400 C2D, G.Skill PC8500 [1066MHz] memory , & a Sapphire Radeon 3850 512MB PCI-E 2.0 video card.
[If you have the $ a Sapphire Radeon 4850, 4870, or 4890.]
A couple of SATA 2 hard drives in RAID 0 .
OCZ StealthXstrem 700 Watt power supply

Pretty much everything I've mentioned is on sale at newegg