AMD or Intel

I am currently in the market for a computer upgrade. I am having  a hard time choosing which cpu to buy. My choices are the 1.7ghz Pentium 4, 1800xp, and 1600xp. I will be mostly doing gaming, little video editing, and internet browsing.  I have seen the benchmarks and AMD seems to be kicking Intels butt. But the only thing holding me back is the test on the Memory bandwidth. How important is that in overall computer performance? What applications will it be noticeable?  
If I choose AMD I have been looking at these mobo's Abit KR7A, Gigabyte GA-7DRR+, and Epox 8K7A.
I am upgrading from a Pentium 3 750mhz, 80gig 7200rpm, 384mbPC133, GeForce Ultra 2 64mb DDR, Sound Blaster Live!, 40/16/10 Plextor, DVD Affrey Drive.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Uranium-235]

Tough choice. Intel might be a little better for the video editing, and amd for gaming. But overall I would recommend the AMD AthlonXP 1800+


IMO

I wouldn't sell the pentium 4 short by any means, the pentium is still a good solid workhorse, Granted - test's may show AMD some advantage. But a few millionths of a second in speed is not discernible to the human eye or brain and doesn't make a grandiose difference overall in performance. The AMD's run hot as a 2 dollar pistol and you can expect to add additional fans to dissapate the extra heat generated or see some slow downs or stalls when the processor is strained and stressed, just my experience and opinion, but not many on this forum may agree with me.

memory brandwith is the most important thing. in the last years processor speeds have increased extreamly, but in relation, merory brandwith has not. intel may be solid workhors, thats outa discussion, but amd is cheaper for the same performance and the only reason to go for intel, imho, is rdram, but it´s so fu+*!n´ expensive that it´s outa discussion for me too, i´m going for a new amd system now with abit kr7a and 256 megs ddr ram, i think thats a good joice for a gamer.

i just bought an abit kr7a-raid, AXP 1800+ and 2*256 corsair xms 2400 DDR ram, and i'm very happy with it, fast and stable, now if only if my alpha 8045 came one day so i can overclock it

All i have to say is when i bought my 1.4gig amd t-bird 4 months ago. I was a hell of a lot cheap then the 1.5 gig Intel chip and also. The 1.4 out preforms the 1.5. Also it only cost my $198 Canada of course. Intel lost my faith after that

It is hard to choose but from my computer i hav now i would go with the AMD i have a amd 1.3ghz and it is rated as good as a intel pentium 4 1.7ghz so if you want proper gaming than go with the amd it is alot faster and doesnt heat up as quickly as a intel but to get the best quality gaming get a amd and a geoforce 2 64mb graphics card and 512mb of ram and add 100mb of ram to your graphics card and but in a zoom600lk fan