Just a note on the heat issue. Both myself and a good friend have athalon CPU's and have been very happy with them. With a large tower case that has had one extra fan added to the rear of the case, and a high rpm CPU fan a 1ghz chip runs at about 112 degrees. It seems that the athalon chip runs a little hotter than it's pentium counterpart on the average. But for the most part if you know this before getting one and cool your case accordingly you shouldn't have many problems. I also found that taking a drill to the case to allow more air to enter has dropped the core temperatue by over 10 degrees. After some experimentation we found that long slits work best for air flow, as opposed to a grouping of holes bored through the case.