Just want to make sure you realise that Athlon 64 uses a different socket (socket 762) from Athlon XP. They are not interchangeable so you need to decide which to go for.
Top Athlon 64's are rated in exactly the same way as Athlon XP's, so if you get a 2800 version of each you should get the same performance. But that all changes when you switch to full 64 bit operation. Reports from Linux 64-bit operations suggest up to 50% improvement in performance. This sounds a lot to me, but some improvement is likely.
Bookmarks