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The i586 DVD version and the i586 5CD version are fairly similar. (The sources are i586, not i386. This makes little difference as you probably have a Pentium 2/K6-2 or better and those are i686 chips anyway.) The only difference I know between the two is that the DVD does not need to be changed like the 5 CDs do during the installation.
The x86_64 disc will only work on 64-bit chips, such as AMD's Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Opteron, Sempron 64 (a few NEW Semprons are 64-bit), and Turion. Intel has 64-bit CPUs like the Pentium 4 6xx series, some 5x1 or 5x4 Pentium 4s, and the Pentium D. They will be denoted as "EM64T" if they are 64-bit. All the rest of the CPUs are 32-bit and WILL NOT run the 64-bit version.
However, you can use the i386 disc with a 64-bit chip. You may very well have better performance with the x86_64 version, but there are more 32-bit packages than 64 (as I have last seen.) I run an old Pentium 4 Northwood, so I have to run the i586 version.
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