It seems like most of the tech world is waiting for the launch of AMD's Athlon64 processor line. The Athlon64, in case you've been living as a castaway on a South Seas island, is AMD's upcoming desktop version of its Hammer 64-bit x86-64 architecture. However, a few hardy souls have configured single-processor, Opteron 1xx CPUs into Asus Nforce3 boards to build desktop systems for general purpose use, including high end gaming. [...] We configured a new set of testbeds, to compare AMD's latest baby, to the Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz part and the Athlon XP 3200+. (Due to configuration changes, we weren't able to get comparable results to the 1.8GHz system we tested back in August). What we found was very intriguing, and if the performance we see translates at all to the upcoming desktop variant, which AMD has dubbed the Athlon64, which is scheduled to be announced on September 23rd, then gamers everywhere should rejoice. [...] The complete review is available over @ ExtremeTech