sheps... consider using the
EDIT key when posting information please... seeing 6 or 7 posts within a coupla minutes doesn't help the flow of a thread at all m8... its common etiquette...
gmeagle... a coupla articles put up for people considering a move to a64's... was accurate @ the time of writing...
http://forum.osnn.net/showthread.php?t=39474
there are no current pci-E motherboards for a64 based systems, however there is no advantage currently to switching to pci-express... if you into video encoding and the like you may want to look @ a pentium 4 setup as an option as well...
for gaming and the like an a64 setup would be best by a few fps...
consider what you are going to be doing with the system... consider a budget and then go with a system configuration that will best suit your needs...
socket 754 is a decent solution if you are not going to be using massively memory intensive applications... generally it is not that far off a sckt 939 system though I would advise going with a socket 939 system for future proofing reasons... the 754 range will likely top out @ around the 3900+ or 4000+ or something like that from the grapevine...
there are no advantages to using a 64bit o/s @ the moment unless you decide to use a linux distro... in that case you can see some big gains...
winxp-64 has shown little to no gains in tests so far though this is with an unfinished o/s and generally raw drivers... it has potential however...
pretty much all new motherboards come with system monitoring software and thermal diodes built-in... as is the a64 processor have a built-in thermal diode to prevent the cpu from over-heating... any extra's are generally part of the package that the mobo maker ships with the board...
the information for my board (fan speeds/temps/clocks) are all displayed via an MSI tool that monitors the data and also allows me to OC via the desktop (not that I really oc at all anyways
)
btw why is it that you want to get a pci-E based board?