I'm not buying anything now, and probably not even in a few months, but having been slightly prompted by the probable need to replace my power supply I was also looking at some options for further replacements.

I don't intend to buy a new computer in a whole package. I'll just get the core components instead, along with a power supply equipped case, and move everything else (cards, periphery) to it.

So all I need is a case (with 400W power supply), an MBO and a CPU and maybe some memory (512MB or so DDR2).

Since Intel Core Duo seem to be incredibly expensive, and I tend to be an AMD fan while prices of comparable Athlon 64 X2 processors seem a bit lower than Core2s, that's what I'd probably opt for. Those are quite awesome anyway, 64 bits, two cores, high speed bus. What else does one geek need?

Oh well.. the issue I'm concerned about, however, are motherboard chipsets. It appears that the only choices we've got for X2 compatible boards are Nvidia Nforce and ATI crossfire (as I'm told in #tuxhacker). There should be some VIA chipsets too, but those seem to be rather rare lately. :\

VIA seems to be the safest choice based on my experience, because I'm using a MBO with a VIA chipset right now and I've never had support problems on GNU/Linux with it. But nforce? I don't feel so good about anything wearing a "Nvidia" logo on it (bad karma from the 3D support field). Is it well supported on GNU/Linux, without proprietary blobs and drivers?

There is no chance in hell that I am required to use some sort of proprietary drivers for such a basic thing as a chipset! The very thought of it angers me actually...

So, what do you think? Do you have any recommendations for an X2 compatible MBO/chipset?

Thanks