When I was researching Athlon64s, they were closer to $800 and there were rumors that AMD was experiencing a supply shortage taht would make it difficult for large numbers of consumers to get their hands on one. i dont know if the shortage was just misinformation or they have solved the problem, but if the average price for an Athlon64 has dropped as low as pricewatch's lowest price, then Im willing to stick my foot in my mouth and retract my earlier comment. However, i still feel that the 64 wont be able to reach its full potential until not only 64 bit operating systems but 64 bit software that takes advantage of it begin to hit mainstream market.

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I would not bet on a 64-bit windows os bringing forth anywhere near the speed that reviewers are saying it will. Dos got leaner and faster with every version, but windows gets bigger and slower. MS' mission is not to let a 2x hardware improvement be visible to expert users, it is to use the biggest chunk of that improvement as he can to hide the slowness and size of his new OS, which has more neat icons, voices, and breadth of bundled function to the inexpert user. At least that's been the trend so far. Windows is not going to be re-written to the point that the whole thing is 64-bit wide instructions, maybe there will be 10% of the code that benefits from a 64-bit cpu, but there may also be an increase of 9% of hardware overhead required to run it. If he can make the os 1% faster but 20% more functional to the novice, he will do that all day long as opposed to make it 20% more efficient to the expert. Both the appeal and the demise of DOS was that it was aimed at the geek who wanted speed above all, and we often forget that Gates is way too smart to prioritize the minority, the geeks who want an os that is more efficient instead of less. Its like expecting McDonald's to prioritize the needs of vegetarians.

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JonPhoenix, high-end Opterons and Athlon FXs (based on the Opteron) are in the $700 range. That may have been what you were reading about. Now about 64 bit Windows. There are betas out now. Support will come soon. Windows isn't that hard for MS to port because NT has a history of running on Alpha, MIPS, and Itanium. Alpha and MIPS support were dropped in the early days of 4.0, but Windows has always been ready for 64 bit. Going to 64 bit will be just like going to 32 bit. It'll take years for everything to switch over, but most stuff that needs the speed will switch soon. Reading some of these comments, I'm starting to think AMD should market the Athlon 64 as an "Athlon XP with support for >4Gb of RAM". Too many people think they need to wait for 64 bit Windows, when actually, in 32-bit mode the Athlon 64 is amazingly fast and still a good value.

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