Yesterday autodesk called me about upgrading and offered to have a local vendor get in touch.

you might go to their site and look up some one local from, the web page. and try a trade..:?

i7 kicks butt on systems tuned for it,, much faster than my Phenom II 

''whether my 3ds Max 32-bit will run on a 64-bit OS''

yes in the x86 folder.