Right now, the best 'proven' tech to get would be an Athlon 64 in the socket 939. Intel hasn't fielded a true 32-64 bit capable processor -yet- the Itanium uses a non-standard codeset, it doesn't count here), and those that 'they just have to turn it on' for are actually 40 bit processors with a bus multiplexer. Add to that the fact that all those folks who bought one of LGA-775 socket boards with the 915-925 chipset have just learned that they =can't= use the forthcoming dual core P4's: signal incompatability. You'll need one of the 400 series chipsets to use the dualies with. PCI-E has gotten caught up in a marketing nightmare; Nvidia has basically gobbled the idea up, and the focus has been on getting SLI working (not that there is any -reason- for tag team dual video cards; nothing on the drawing boards are close to saturating =one= PCI-E video port's bandwidth). Other parts of the spec have suffered due to the over emphasis on video and selling two cards to bleeding edgers. The only trouble I could see you having with that, fixer, is at the driver level. CL stated that Nvidia helped with the OpenGL implementation for P6...and we all know how kind and helpful Nvidia is about making sure their code samples work on a competitor's hardware... :P