Mark,
What kind of hardware is raising your driver concerns?
I ask as most Macs come with all the hardware, and consequently drivers, in place.
Also, you should verify that the system is actually running in 64-bit mode. As you may know, the Intel Core Duo 2, like the AMD64, support both 32 and 64-bit software, as long as the OS does. Might be worht confirming whether the OS will allow 32-bit drivers where 64-bit don't yet exist.
The second anandtech article I posted earlier, might help on this question.
If you do change teams , let us know how it goes.