The Athlon 64's

Well, hello, this is my first post. So its that time to get a new PC, im running on 3 - 4 year old hardware exluding my video card. I want to get a Athlon 64 Socket 939, and I know that you need a 64 Bit Operating System to take full advantage of it. I want to know about the rating system, because im interested in getting a new 3500+ for 235$ Canadian. (I think thats a very good price, its a store in my area selling it, compared to what tigerdirect wants; 300$.)

So anyway, since I will not be using a 64 Bit Operating System, would it act like an Athlon XP 3200+? Its just that to get 3500+, i figure they rank it operating in 64 bit. I know it does operate in 32 bit, but the fastest CPU AMD i know in 32 bit is the Athlon XP 3200+. So does anyone know if i should get the Athlon 64 3500+ , or go for a Athlon 64 3200+ for a lower price?

My (Rather Crappy) Specs
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Athlon XP 1800+
768 DDR SDRAM
EVGA FX5500 AGP Card
40 gb WD Hardrive
CD-RW Drive
Windows ME

No go with the 3500, it's a great chip with or without XP64. Sure a 64 bit OS will take advantage of your chip but most everyone who owns a Athlon 64 is running plain jane XP of some sort and I don't know of anyone who feels unimpressed. It's plenty faster than the XP3200. For starters the memory controller and front side bus is integrated into the chip itself so you get blazingly fast memory transfer speeds and great responce time. So the fsb essentually runs at the same speed as the chip itself. You also can use dual-channel ram which further increases your memory bandwidth. It's a great value and will last you for many years to come.
I say go for it man:good:

The AMD Athlon 64's processors can run both 32bit and 64bit applications (backward compatible). Even I am running an XP 32bit O.S on my 3500+. That doesnt make any difference.
However, the performance difference between the XP 3200 and A64 3500+ should be quiet significant because of the Hyper Transport Technology. Though the clock speed of the both the CPU's might be same or very close, the AMD64, because of HT, processes more amount of data per cycle.

Just for comparison check any review of the 3500+ and you would be able to see the difference in performance. One link is as follows:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q3/athlon64-3500/index.x?pg=6

Thanks for the replies, im going for the 3500. Sticking with Windows ME,or a n upgrade to 2K.

The difference between the A64 3500 and an AXP 3200 would be tremendous, much more than Hypertransport can account for. Neeldess to say, many more technologies and enhancements make the Athlon 64s a great CPU for desktop users.

Well, I have the 3500+ Venice with Windows XP Professional x64 and I would recommend that you don't get it. I don't know what the performance numbers look like but I do know that there are some serious incompatability issues. Even a lot of Microsoft's own software is incompatable.

ME is old enough that you may want to make sure you've got at least Win2k, or risk most newer hardware not supporting the OS. As far as MS is concerned, the Win9x platform is more or less dead in the water. The Windows XP 64 still lacks a lot of 3rd party support, so unless you actually need it, avoid it.

I'd go with Win2k, it's cheap, available, supported, and doesn't have all the extra fat XP does. They're basically the same OS except XP has a few more security options I think and a nicer GUI.