Hmm. Okay, I thought sure I'd read that -march=k8 was for older amd processors and the -nocona was for newer 64 ones... I also know I compiled from stage1 up with nocona before... but given my history of problems with this machine and the 64bit gentoo compiles, I definitely appreciate the feedback. I'm sure that is a great deal of the problem.
Again, many, many, many thanks.