From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Apr 6 14:51:15 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E82816A400 for ; Thu, 6 Apr 2006 14:51:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from vivek@khera.org) Received: from yertle.kcilink.com (yertle.kcilink.com [65.205.34.180]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D9A9743D45 for ; Thu, 6 Apr 2006 14:51:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from vivek@khera.org) Received: from [192.168.7.103] (host-103.int.kcilink.com [192.168.7.103]) by yertle.kcilink.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 58B0CB823 for ; Thu, 6 Apr 2006 10:51:14 -0400 (EDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v749.3) In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Vivek Khera Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2006 10:51:13 -0400 To: freebsd-stable X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.749.3) Subject: Re: Pros and Cons of amd64 (versus i386). X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:51:15 -0000 On Apr 6, 2006, at 10:38 AM, Pete French wrote: > I was thinking of moving this to amd64, but was kind of put off by > results > from a test system I setup using an Athlon 64 3700+ to talk to this > machine. The opteron box is currently running 6.1-PRE/i386, and the > 3700 is Let me comment that my 64-bit commentary about I/O is based on experience with Opterons, which have excellent I/O bandwidth. The Intel EM64T boxes do ok, too, but I have no experience with other 64- bit CPUs. The opterons are just a notch above anything else that I've used. That said, I run 64-bit FreeBSD on all servers capable of it, just to have consistent system images (all my new boxes going forward are 64 bit, so I can eventually phase out the 32-bit system images). Management of multiple systems changes the decision making process sometimes...