A question about architecture and bus-width
 

I'm clueless when it comes to this type of thing, so I have a few questions.

I am running a computer with 2GB of RAM, a AMD Athlon 64 x2 processor, and 2 hard drives, one with OpenSUSE 10.3 (32-bit) and one with Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit).

My first question is given my ram and processor type would it be worth moving the 64-bit version of OpenSUSE and if so would my 32-bit version of Windows still work?

My second question is on my current version of OpenSUSE why can't I install any i686 programs?

(yes I am aware that similar questions have been asked but none had a answer that satisfied me.)

No, your Windows installation will not be affected if you install a 64-bit version of Linux. I have a 32-bit Slackware, a 64-bit ArchLinux and a pre-installed 32-bit Vista on the same harddrive, they don't affect each other.
As to advantages/disadvantages of moving to 64-bit, I don't think there's a clear answer to that. You might notice some improvement in speed of some applications. But then again, you might not. They say, 64-bit is the future of computing... But as of now there are some problems specific to 64-bit... It's a matter of choice.
What programs did you try to install and what exactly happened? You should be able to install them.

i686 packages are for intel machines. Won't work with Athlon or Opteron.

I think they will run on my machine, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I686 it should.

That's not true. :)

Yes, you most definitely should be able to run i686 on a X2.

This might not apply but Fedora had a issue a while back where the i586 kernel would get installed instead of the i686 kernel. If I remember correctly this prevented i686 stuff from being installed (required the i686 kernel to run).

uname -a

should spit out your kernel version including i586/i686.

After messing around with YaST2 I've learned that it's not an architecture issue. I'm trying to get opengl to work so I tried to install a package from NVIDIA called x11-video-nvidia and I then get this message:
#### YaST2 conflicts list - generated 2008-01-27 21:22:18 ####

x11-video-nvidia cannot be installed due to missing dependencies
There are no installable providers of nvidia-gfx-kmp for x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3]
=== x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] ===
x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] will be installed by the user.
xorg-x11-libXext-7.2-65.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libXext.so.6)
3ddiag-0.740-85.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (3ddiag == 0.740-85)
11 more...
glib2-2.14.1-4.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libglib-2.0.so.0)
Mesa-7.0.1-18.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libGLcore.so.1)
x11-video-nvidiaG01-169.07-1.1.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libnvidia-tls.so.1)
pango-1.18.2-4.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libpangox-1.0.so.0)
bash-3.2-61.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (/bin/sh)
xorg-x11-libX11-7.2-75.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libX11.so.6)
atk-1.20.0-5.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libatk-1.0.so.0)
gtk2-2.12.0-5.i586 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0)
glibc-2.6.1-18.i686 is needed by x11-video-nvidia-1.0.9639-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] (libm.so.6)
nvidia-gfx-kmp-default-1.0.9639_2.6.22.13_0.3-0.1.i586[http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3] provides nvidia-gfx-kmp == 1.0.9639_2.6.22.13_0.3, but it is uninstallable. Try installing it on its own for more details.
(null)
Conflict Resolution:
( ) do not install x11-video-nvidia
( ) Ignore this requirement just here

#### YaST2 conflicts list END ###

I've already installed another driver successfully by the name x11-video-nvidiaG01.

Actually I think I've fixed it.