No problem. I understand what your trying to say.
I completely agree that simply upgrading to a 64-bit capable system would also mean upgrading other capabilities that will improve performence.
In other words, upgrade to the athlon 64.
Oh, BTW. The 64-bit itself does add a little performence upgrade. Its not really noticiable and its impact is minimal.
Here's how it works. 32-bit programs run in a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit CPU means the 32-bit program will get all 4 gigs of mem bandwidth to itself as opposed to a legacy 32-bit system which has to share that 4 gig bandwidth.