Athlon 64 vs Pentium 4

man wrote:
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?

actually, the future of operating systems is not 64-bit, because 64-bit
is the present (thus, I'm living in the past...) I basically gave
microsoft the middle finger and now refuse to buy or accept anything
Microsoft, even if i didn't pay for it. Your brain stops rotting and
starts growing when you use Linux. There are already Many Linux
distributions out there that 64-bit compatibility by default, and
adding 64-bit is as simple as changing a few kernel settings. it would
figure that Microsoft, with all its retro-active security updates, has
not commercialized a 64-bit operating system, and when they do, it'll
prolly be just as ****ty as the 32-bit versions... but said 64-bit
version DOES exist. check ATI's drivers section of their website. why
would anybody have drivers for something that doesn't exist? Intel is
still stuck commercially, along with microsoft, in the 32-bit past. AMD
follows Linux development, Intel follows Windows development (hence the
word "Wintel") AMD might not do as good in many benches, but try to get
a pentium 4 to run on with a 64-bit version of Linux, it won't happen.
plus if you decide to go intel, and don't have really expensive
cooling, I hope you have a fire extinguisher ready. Intel overheats
like no other, so count on your computer needing to be excessively LOUD
if you get an intel processor.

You wanna build a computer thats gonna last? go AMD, make sure the
motherboard has SATA (most AMD64 boards do) also, if it has onboard
LAN, make sure it is Gigabit, and be looking for one with an S/PDIF
connector also (optical, mind you, NOT COAX (or both), make sure it Has
at Least 3 DDR slots with support for 3GB of DDR400 (aka PC3200)...
thats about all i can suggest...