From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Apr 18 21:03:37 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E7B1216A402 for ; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:03:37 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from danny@ricin.com) Received: from smtpq1.groni1.gr.home.nl (smtpq1.groni1.gr.home.nl [213.51.130.200]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AC39213C45B for ; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:03:37 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from danny@ricin.com) Received: from [213.51.130.188] (port=42655 helo=smtp3.groni1.gr.home.nl) by smtpq1.groni1.gr.home.nl with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1HeHJQ-0000Id-ML for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:03:36 +0200 Received: from cp464173-a.dbsch1.nb.home.nl ([84.27.214.242]:60697 helo=desktop.homenet) by smtp3.groni1.gr.home.nl with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1HeHJO-0006nJ-9I for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:03:34 +0200 From: Danny Pansters To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:03:19 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 References: <19889.31715.qm@web88307.mail.re4.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <19889.31715.qm@web88307.mail.re4.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200704182303.20059.danny@ricin.com> X-AtHome-MailScanner-Information: Please contact support@home.nl for more information X-AtHome-MailScanner: Found to be clean Subject: Re: AMD64 X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:03:38 -0000 On Wednesday 18 April 2007 21:30:14 Michael S wrote: > Good day all. > > I am getting my (first) Athlon 64 x 2 today or > tomorrow and was wondering whether I should stick with > the reliable x86 or try the AMD64 port. I'd try it but ... > Any performance penalties when running x86 FreeBSD on > a 64-bit machine? ... for some things it may ... > Also what are the common problems, i.e. drivers, > applications that are known not to work under the > AMD64. This is going to be a desktop/workstation type > system. ... there are quite a few 3rd party things that don't work or that need kludgy 32bits emulation. Flash comes to mind, also (MS/Real/..) media codecs. All the stuff we love to hate. Most importantly though, you can't use nvidia driver (32bit). I have a spare amd64 box with a nvidia based board (ASUS SLI something with the graphics card in a PCI Express slot, gforce4 IIRC) and I found I could only use plain (xorg) nv driver, and had to disable any hardware acceleration. Else it would just reboot randomly. I only use this machine to test kbtv on amd64. Moving the TV window around or resizing it is painfully slow (the video itself is OK but it eats a lot more CPU with non accelerated x rendering, up to 10%). Needless to say the machine is turned off most of the time... So I think what matters is whether these things matter to you :) I don't think the base system is any faster or slower. But it depends on what you're going to use it for. HTH, Dan