Buying new motherboard. AMD or Intel?

AMD or Intel?  I hear Athlon is way better than Pentium 4.  Also, what's the 64-bit thing for?  Overall improvment to your PC?  Good for gaming PCs?

Intel is better supported, and if you want to use your rig for games you're going to want an intel because it's got the genuine advantage of having an authentic pentium instruction set whereas what AMD puts out is mostly cobbled together crap they've pieced together out of specs they've pulled out of the dumpsters in the intel parking lot. To answer your question, 64 is five less than sixy-nine, if you catch my drift.

AMD long since overtook Intel in terms of price vs performance. However if you're willing to pay extra, Intel chips often have certain advantages, such as a faster FSB.
64-bit is what should have been "the next big thing" but wasn't, because 64-bit Windows took eons to come out and still offers no benefits over 32-bit, despite the fact that it SHOULD

Don't listen to >>2! AMD chips will run any modern game, unless you have something ancient like a K4-K6 chip. 64 bit does offer greater performance, even without a 64-bit OS, which WILL also get MORE performance (depending on what you do with it, it may or may not be noticeable compared to a 32-bit OS). AMD's socket 939 Opterons are currently the best thing out there by any measure. They are based on 5 year old technology, but still surpass all intels (even the .65nm chips) in nearly every way. Intels CURRENT .65nm chips will get you the highest overclocks EVER. The Presler core is capable of 6GHz. That being said, AMD will be soon (in the next few months be announcing AM-2, and socket 939 will BE OBSOLETED. Also, Intel will also this year be shipping their Conroe core CPU's which they alledge will outperform EVERYTHING. If you want to wait, it could be worth it. If you want to buy now, I recommend
AMD: Opteron, or San Diego/Toledo type A64.
Intel: Yonah or Presler (Yonahs are used in the new Macs, dual core, .65nm, no 64bit support, Presler are dualcore, 64bit with EM64T instructionset, but don't perform as well as the A64 X2 CPUs)

>>2
AMD gets their tech from IBM, not stolen/scraped Intel ideas. Lurk more sites outside 4chan.

What's the estimated price for the Conroe?  That'll determine if I wait or not.

Also, is a 64-pit processor worth the price?  And is 64-bit WindowsXP pirate-able?

Sage?
Sage!