From owner-freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 10 20:29:07 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A30F16A4AB for ; Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:29:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from alecn2002@yandex.ru) Received: from pantene.mail.yandex.net (pantene.mail.yandex.net [213.180.223.92]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 72CE843D45 for ; Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:29:06 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from alecn2002@yandex.ru) Received: from YAMAIL (pantene.yandex.ru) by mail.yandex.ru id ; Wed, 11 Oct 2006 00:28:54 +0400 Received: from [91.76.91.157] ([91.76.91.157]) by mail.yandex.ru with HTTP; Wed, 11 Oct 2006 00:28:54 +0400 (MSD) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 00:28:54 +0400 (MSD) From: "alecn2002" Sender: alecn2002@yandex.ru Message-Id: <452C0286.000005.20759@pantene.yandex.ru> MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Yamail [ http://yandex.ru ] Errors-To: alecn2002@yandex.ru To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org X-Source-Ip: 91.76.91.157 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Fw: To amd64 or not to amd64? X-BeenThere: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: alecn2002@yandex.ru List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the AMD64 platform List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:29:07 -0000 Well, probably this question was discussed here many times, but the last thread about "transiting from i386 to amd64" dated year 2004, so it's very posible things change since that time... So, I've just upgraded my home comp from AMD Sempron to Athlon64. Only CPU upgrade, nothing else. I've booted my old good i386-arched FreeBSD 6.1 and it looks like it works fine. The question is: will I have any benefits if I'll move to amd64 system, or it's safer and better to stay with i386 arch? About 50% of time my children use it to watch movies (DVD, DivX, MPEG-4). >From the rest I use it for working at home (RadRails, KDevelop, a lot of C/C++ compilation), and my wife use it to access Internet and use OpenOffice. Problem-free operation and stability have precedense for me over system speed. Technical details: M/B: ASUS K8N, with on-board PATA/SATA, audio, 10/100/1000 Ethernet Processor: AMD Athlon64 3000+ 2GHz (Was: AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.8 GHz) RAM: 1 * 512 Mb PC-400 HDD: 80 Gb SATA-150 (Seagate ) Video: NVidia GeForce 4 FX 5800 128 Mb AGP 8x System: FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #0: Sat Sep 23 00:12:24 MSD 2006 root@:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/ALECN61 i386 XFree86-4.5 + nvidia-driver-1.0.8774 KDE 3.5.4 One more detail: I do need linuxlator, b/c I use RadRails a lot and it runs in Linux mode only. AFAIK there is no 64-bit linuxlator exist and amd64 system use 32-bit linuxlator, is it efficient and reliable enough? Even more detail: AFAIK there is no amd64 NVidia driver for direct rendering available, is it correct? And one side question: will I benefit if I move to amd64 system and install gcc-4.1, over current gcc-3.4.4 that came with system? And the same - if I'll stay in i386 mode but upgrade to gcc-4.1? I mean here both compilation speed and efficiency of generated code. --- With best regards, Alexander Novitsky