Conroe & Asus P5B. Should I convert?

[Nicholas Sayer]

I have a Conroe (E6600) running on an Asus P5B. This motherboard is  
based on the P965 chipset. Right now it's running as an i386. I've  
had to hack a few of the drivers to properly recognize this system,  
but the important parts of it do work correctly.

Since the CPU has EM64T capability, I'm considering switching the  
machine over. I've read some of the list archives and believe I can  
use a temporary 2nd drive to do the cross-build, boot and upgrade  
rigamarole.

I'm a bit more concerned about the ports. I see the COMPAT_IA32  
option in the kernel configuration. Can I expect my installed  
packages to work after the upgrade? Specifically at least Apache 2,  
PHP, JDK15, PostgreSQL 8.1 annd KDE?

I guess since I have a working system now, I'm sort of looking for a  
reason not to break it. :)