Mark -- thanks for the information! Your explanation of IA64 vs AMD64 is about what I thought the situation was, but it never hurts to check.
As far as hardware is concerned: I'm planning to use a Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 motherboard, which in turn uses the Intel P55 Express chipset, the Realtek ALC888 audio chipset, and the Realtek 8111D LAN chipset. The Realtek website has linux drivers for both chips updated in Jan and Feb of this year. For video I plan to use the Gigabyte GV-NX84S512HP, which in turn uses nVidia GeForce 8400GS; the nVidia site has 64 bit linux drivers for that chipset. Thanks again for your help on this! Let me know if you can think of anything I've missed or any other research I should do before placing an order. -PT
