I recently read a review of amd 64 bit processors and comparisons to Intel P4 and P4EE (I believe it was on Anandtech, but can't find it atm). The AMD Athlon64 3000+ offers a lot of bang for your buck, and Asus K8N Neo Platinum is supposed to be a kick-ass mobo. Since you're planning to keep the processor for a while you may even see the first 64-bit applications before you discard the cpu.