The first generation Athlon 64 chips were out in early '03.

Monster wrote:

but would you want a first gen 64bit system? First gens are usually
expensive and bad when you look back and compare them to the 2nd or 3rd
generations.

"man" wrote in message
om...
This has probably been talked about before here...

I'm building a new system...the goal is to avoid building a new system
for the longest possible time. It's come down to getting an AMD Athlon
64 3200+ with 1MB cache, or a Pentium 4 (Prescott) 3.0 GHZ with 1MB
cache.

In my research I've found that a prescott will beat the Athlon in most
benches. The prescott also seems attractive because it can be
overclocked to 4 GHZ (!).

But is the future of operating systems 64-bit? Or is it going to be
years before windows will be 64 bit in the mainstream?

So in other words, is 64-bit silly, and should I just go for the
speed?