I use the AMD 1 GHz Athlon in my "Multimedia" Music PC. I have never had any problem with the chip, or with it's performance. I use it running ACID 3.0, Cubase, Cool Edit Pro, Sound Forge 5.0, Orion 2.4, Fruity Loops 3, Samplitude, Sequoia, The Sims (House Party), 3D Shark Hunt, Vegas Audio 2.0 and PCDj Red. I don't glitch up, and when I render .mp3's, the process is fast and reliable (I also have 384 Megs of RAM). I also have a Pentium III 733, that seems to be just as stable... So I have conclude that .... I digressed again.
The War Of The Chips, is a one filled with many casualties (remember the lowly Cyrix Chip... now that bad boy, I'd never use with any type of Multimedia app !). The key to getting or choosing a chip for your specific needs, is not necessarily the speed, but the cache, and the FSB. The more onboard cache you have, the faster the instructions can be executed by the processor, and the FSB (Front Side Bus), is the "highway" that those instructions ride on. Now the newer Athlons run with at least a 200 mhz FSB, whereas the new Pentium 4's run with a 400 Mhz FSB ! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT ! For Multimedia apps, such as streaming video, or audio processing.
From: Paul Garry