you asked the wrong question for this forum... 90% of people in around here is going to tell you to either get an athlon xp because they're faster when they're compaired to similar P4's and cheaper... or wait for hammer.
But here's my suggestion... don't wait for hammer, because lets just say that it turns out to be a flop (hey it could happen) or just wait for benchmarks, and everything... but you probably want a new computer now. I just bought a 2.2 Ghz P4, and you can OC to 2.4 very easily and save lotsa $$$... also, it will not die if the fan stops working, or the heatsink falls off... (which will probably never happen)... but I have been an intel fan for a while, but I am very impressed with AMD;s products, and I would recomend them to you if you want to go that way. But the best price/performance that I've heard about is the P4 1.6AGhz... you can O/C it, depending on how good your heatsink and fan are, to extreme clockspeeds... So my recomendation is P4... but more people will tell you AMD... both are fine.