While deciding whether to go with Intel or AMD system I asked myself the above question. What's more important in a long run for the MSFS - having 64 bit CPU or a hyper-threaded one ? After realizing that HT did nothing to FS9 and actually made things worse for some addons I am beginning to think that actually 64-bit-ness may be more important with future in mind. It may actually be impossible architecturally by FS to take full advantage of the HT since there is only one video card and cache memory is shared (and because of idiosyncrasies of the FS itself). On the other hand 64 bit AMD Athlon has twice as many internal registers and they are of course 64 bits long. If OS becomes 64-bits and FS is ported to 64 bits we may see meaningful performance increase. I am just debating with myself ...Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

64-bit. HT is more hype than threading. The 64-bit AMD chips outperform the equivalent rating Intel on every possible battlefield, inc price, and they're 64-bit computing ready, come the day. In the meantime, enjoy the extra capacity of a 64-bit chip with FS9. But if you're gong to change mobo you might want to wait a couple of months until PCI Express boards are shipping in quantity.Allcott