Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:17:25 +0200 From: Roland Smith <rsmith@xs4all.nl> To: Michael S <msherman77@yahoo.com> Cc: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>, FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: AMD64 Message-ID: <20070418211725.GA74368@slackbox.xs4all.nl> In-Reply-To: <20070418164146.4c2a9c68.wmoran@potentialtech.com> References: <19889.31715.qm@web88307.mail.re4.yahoo.com> <20070418164146.4c2a9c68.wmoran@potentialtech.com>
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--FCuugMFkClbJLl1L Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 04:41:46PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote: > In response to Michael S <msherman77@yahoo.com>: > >=20 > > 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. > >=20 > > Any performance penalties when running x86 FreeBSD on > > a 64-bit machine? >=20 > Performance is equivalent, except in a few corner cases. Keep in mind th= at > there are some cases where amd64 is actually slower, so it's really a was= h, > unless you know you're specific application will benefit from 64 bit. >=20 > > 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. >=20 > Personally, I would stick with i386, unless you like to experiment. Last > time I tried to run amd64 on a desktop, I had lots of trouble with misc > problems here and there. Same machine running i386 is rock stable with > no problems. My gut tells me that a lot of desktop apps and libraries > aren't really mature from a 64-bit standpoint yet. I've been running amd64 on my desktop since 5.3 without any real=20 problems. But I only picked hardware that had drivers available. Some things to keep in mind: 1) no binary nvidia graphics driver=20 2) no flash plugin 3) java is cumbersome. 4) no win32 codecs for mplayer ad 1) I've got a Radeon 9250 that's supported by the native Xorg & DRI driver, so no problem. I don't like binary-only drivers anyway. ad 2) So no annoying flash ads either. :-) I can live with that. ad 3) I don't use it anyway. ad 4) Works fine without them, AFAICT. Stuff like emacs, firefox, gimp, sane, imagemagick, audacious and mplayer all work fine. I haven't tried openoffice, bacause it's huge with lots of dependencies and I prefer LaTeX anyway. Roland --=20 R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) --FCuugMFkClbJLl1L Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.3 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFGJorlEnfvsMMhpyURAqLEAJ9cgFPEFg1B9IG73u9Ceefm76M5TgCfd54f 2CIUy9qTv+FV4uuob8em09A= =Yr0Z -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --FCuugMFkClbJLl1L--
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