ready to drop the hammer an a new hk avr235

my thinking was to use the hk as a preamp and get a good 3 ch amp for the front 3 in the future. i was looking at the specks on the onkyo tx ??702 and the amp section lookes to be as good as the carver im using. looking closely at the carver specks the 200 watt dynamic power rating is a 2 ohms so the onkyo amp looks to be almost exactly the same. actualy a little better if you look at the thd .08 at rated power. i hope it is not exagerated, like some of the other avr's.

if i am not going to have to buy a 3 ch amp my budget will go up to about 750. but the amp would still be an option down the road, i will not buy anything without pre-out.

thanks again everybody for sugestions and comments.

onkyo tx sr-702 or integra dtr-6.5. they are almost one and the same. power specks identical, s/n ratio is 6 dB higher on integra. integra has detachable power cord. both are 33.5 pounds and seem to have the same remote. $200 price diferance.

are they going to preform the same? which is a better deal?
$700 for the onkyo, $900 for the integra.

by the way i listened to the integra today, it powered a pair of macintosh speakers to almost consert level and sounded good.