Just wondering what the fuss was about.
Why do gamers worship these processors? Games are not 64-bit just now, so why shell out the extra money for an overpriced CPU which will make no difference in games? It's far from being a minimum specification, and 64-bit games are a good few years down the line. Save your money and buy it later, because the AMD64 you have in your "1337 rigs" just now will be hopelessly out of date by the time games go 64-bit.
It's the gamers that love these CPU's, but why? I've been playing games on a 32-bit Intel for years and years and get identical performance to an AMD (I've used both). My friend's got an AMD64 3800+ with the same components as I've got (I've got an Intel P4 3.2Ghz), no difference in performance. So why pay £400+ for something which isn't that special?
In actual fact, running 32-bit software on a 64-bit CPU could potentially hinder performance, as the processor is looking for 32 extra bits which aren't there which slows everything down a little bit.
Sure, 64-bit CPUs have their uses, but not in games IMHO.