What to install on an amd64 machine?

[Alexander Volovics]

In 2 weeks time I will be getting an amd64 machine and I have
been reading up on possible problems.
Because the answers to the questions I would like answered are
contaminated with hardware/software issues when googling or reading
mailing lists I hope to get some unequivocal answers here.

- Can you install FC3-i386 on an amd64 machine without problems?
  Can the FC3-i386 kernel and drivers handel the hardware without
  problems?

- Looking at the packages contained in FC3-x86_64 I see both i386
  and x86_64 versions for a lot of things. For example:
  hal-0.4.0-10.i386.rpm and hal-0.4.0-10.x86_64.rpm.
  Are the i386 versions included for 'compat' reasons, so you can
  run i386 apps under FC3-x86_64?
  And are they installed by default when doing a standard workstation
  install or do you add them if necessary?
  If they are available for 'compat' reasons are they sufficient for
  all i386 apps I would like to run or do you sometimes have to add
  extra i386 libraries?
  Can i386 libraries always coexist with x86_64 libraries without
  problems?

- Do up2date/yum function faultlessly when adding i386 apps to
  a machine running FC3-x86_64.

- If both FC3-i386 and FC3-x86_64 can run on an amd64 machine without
  problems are there significant advantages for the x86_64 version?

- I will be getting a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum board with an Athlon64
  3500+ socket 399 and an UDMA100 hard drive. Does anybody know of
  any special problems when installing either FC3-i386 or FC3-x86_64?

Alexander