BTW I forgot to post what I ended up buying

from http://www.nisku.ca/nisku/index.html

AMD OPTERON 64-bit SERVER 146- 2.0 GHz
ASUS Via 3 MOBO 5PCI AGP 8X, USB 2.0, Firewire
3 GB DDR, Corsair XM83200 Register
Nvidia Quadro 750XGL - ASP 8x - 128 MB DDR
Onboard Sound (no charge)
Onboard Network (no charge)
SAMSUNG SPINPOINT 160GB 7200RPM SERIALATA
465 Waif Dual Fan Enermax
case (Silver, Black, Beige)
1.44MB FLOPPY DRIVE
Lieton 52x CDRRW+ 16x DVD Rom
DVD -r/+r Burner
Stock Heatsink from Retail box

_________________
Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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Please keep me posted on: SATA, how is this technology looking? 64 bit, yeah baby! Any issues, anything run especially SLOW with 64 bit? Do you have any 64 bit applications you've been able to run?

I don't even have the machine yet. Should arrive next week. AMD's chips don't have the 32bit slow down like the old Intel chips do. In fact they claim 32 bit apps run a bit faster. Intel changed their strategy when AMD released these chips so it shows they are going in the right direction.

When Windows XP64 ships this fall you are supposed to get a 30-40% boost on the OS processing speed. Which will make it appear that the 32bit apps (Inventor) are actually running faster.

I'm pumped about this machine...

_________________
Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
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Follow @seandotson & @mcadforums & @rndautomationon Twitter

why is the cpu only 2GB?

_________________
Frans X LIebenberg
Structural Engineer
Cape Town, South Africa

You mean 2GHz? That just the clock speed. Clock speeds don't mean much anymore.

This chip goes toe to toe with a 3.4GHz (non 64 bit) Intel chip and in a lot of cases beats it.

_________________
Sean Dotson, PE
RND Automation & Engineering
Free 30 day trial of iPropWiz v5
Follow @seandotson & @mcadforums & @rndautomationon Twitter

I know what the marketing people say, I just don't trust it. Think about hyperthreading... think about how bad nvidia screwed the pooch on DX9. Proof is in the pudding, trust but verify etc. etc.