I finally bit the bullet and bought an X2 AMD-64. I'm glad I didn't buy more than one. Setting up linux was a total and I mean *TOTAL* pain in the a$$. An asus mobo, and of course the on-board netcard isn't recognized. Tried a plain old pci, well it was recognized, but wouldn't communicate with anything. Finally gave up and loaded XP-64. Well the install was painless. Only problem is the firewall and MS just loving to do it all their way. Couldn't get D2OL registered on the thing..... finally just gave that up in disgust too. Never have had a lick of trouble using Gigabyte mobos with regular AMD-64's. If the damn thing hadn't cost me so much money, I'd be dribbling it down the street like a basketball. Ready to swear off computers. Really sorry I bought the thing.