Those issues were resolved. AMD had some of the best minds that worked on the Alpha processor for DEC involved in the design of the Athlon and Athlon 64. At the moment, 64 bitness isn't a real factor. That said, the Athlon 64's are the fastest processors out there, run 32 bit apps in native mode, were designed. Vue is currently optimized for the Intel chips and hyperthreading, but -observed- performance is that AMD is right up there. And if you decided to, for example, build with the Athlon 64, you could get the socket 939 motherboard. All it would take to enable using the X2 dual core processor is a BIOS flash (but check the maker's website just to be sure). Going from a single core P4 to one of their dualies is going to require a new motherboard and memory. So you have to consider what your upgrade costs will be in the future as well...