Which is better: AMD Athlon XP 1800+ or Intel Pentium 2 GHz?

I'm creating a new PC - I'd like to find out which
CPU will give better performance in a PC used for
digital video editing:

An AMD Athlon XP 1800+ or an Intel Pentium 2GHz?

Thanks in advance.

When I build a new computer I don't think about what CPU to use as much as I
think about what motherboard to choose because, for many reasons, I choose
Intel Pentium.

If I were you, I would get ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard. It is a very fast,
extremely reliable. It is still very stable even when overclocked. Intel
designs and manufactures motherboard chipsets for its own CPUs for better,
faster, and more reliable system performance, and this motherboard has the
latest Intel 875P chipset with PAT(Intel Performance Acceleration Technology).

Intel Pentium4 performs better than Athlon when it comes to video editing, but
the difference in performance is not so great to choose one CPU over another. I
would choose Pentium because they manufacture their own motherboard chipset,
and every software company uses Pentium CPUs as a norm for their applications.

When it comes to video editing, it is not just about CPU performance. It is
also about how much of the burden is taken over by the well performance of a
video card. Here, the performance of the video card is very crucial. If your
budget allows, get ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. It is the best video card. Recently ATI
released Radeon 9800XT which it has faster GPU and memory speed. It performs
**not** a lot, but a little better than Radeon 9800 Pro simply because a new
driver that is specific for the Radeon 9800XT is still ongoing. After the new
driver is released, difference in performance will be more noticeable.