I'd wait for the socket 939 or 775 if you are Intel preferenced. Couple of things to note, personally I love the Intel HT and I use a lot of simultaneous apps as well, office apps, photoshop, etc. I would not go with the A64 single channel chips, which while good chips are going to suffer in multitasking environments.
My thinking is to go with a 775 P4, since you do audio work amongst your interests, but I'd wait for the socket 775 versions to be out, you'll get good multitasking and when Tejas (dual core cpu) comes out you can drop that into your machine and be back to dual core goodness again.
If you prefer AMD, I'd say wait for the socket 939, go with a Newcastle chip (ie stay cheap for the time being), then get a dual core based FX chip when they come out in 2005 and drop that into your machine.
In either case, you'll have to make a slight compromise now, but you'll have the equipment in place to get exactly what you want 1 year from now. And in the meantime you won't drive your budget through the roof.
My thinking is to go with a 775 P4, since you do audio work amongst your interests, but I'd wait for the socket 775 versions to be out, you'll get good multitasking and when Tejas (dual core cpu) comes out you can drop that into your machine and be back to dual core goodness again.
If you prefer AMD, I'd say wait for the socket 939, go with a Newcastle chip (ie stay cheap for the time being), then get a dual core based FX chip when they come out in 2005 and drop that into your machine.
In either case, you'll have to make a slight compromise now, but you'll have the equipment in place to get exactly what you want 1 year from now. And in the meantime you won't drive your budget through the roof.
