From owner-freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 23 12:16:26 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 2C00916A420 for ; Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:16:26 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from andrew@areilly.bpc-users.org) Received: from omta05sl.mx.bigpond.com (omta05sl.mx.bigpond.com [144.140.93.195]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6F84043D45 for ; Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:16:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from andrew@areilly.bpc-users.org) Received: from omtas01sl.mx.bigpond.com ([141.168.4.160]) by omta05sl.mx.bigpond.com with ESMTP id <20060223121623.NQQI18888.omta05sl.mx.bigpond.com@omtas01sl.mx.bigpond.com> for ; Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:16:23 +0000 Received: from areilly.bpc-users.org ([141.168.4.160]) by omtas01sl.mx.bigpond.com (InterMail vG.2.01.00.00 201-2161-114-101-20050713) with ESMTP id <20060223121105.PZSB22076.omtas01sl.mx.bigpond.com@areilly.bpc-users.org> for ; Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:11:05 +0000 Received: (qmail 59984 invoked by uid 501); 23 Feb 2006 12:16:31 -0000 Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:16:31 +1100 From: Andrew Reilly To: Joseph Koshy Message-ID: <20060223121631.GA59890@gurney.reilly.home> References: <43FCEF9C.5050308@bluelight.org.uk> <84dead720602222227g5dcdf987v16cc47f885b0c6a1@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <84dead720602222227g5dcdf987v16cc47f885b0c6a1@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i X-Authentication-Info: Submitted using SMTP AUTH LOGIN at omtas01sl.mx.bigpond.com from [138.217.183.75] using ID topazbpm_qldc_mss02ps@bigpond.com at Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:49:05 +0000 Cc: Terry , freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: AMD 64 stability X-BeenThere: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the AMD64 platform List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:16:26 -0000 On Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 11:57:02AM +0530, Joseph Koshy wrote: > t> I have a ASUS 64 bit board and cpu spare so was considering using these > t> with amd64 version. But due to the data centre being 300 mile away i > t> thought i would check how you guys are finding it first :). Or shall i > t> play it safe and use the i386 i just can't decide > > Do check if your board has any 'known issues': > > http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64/motherboards.html Things are improving pretty rapidly, though. I note that that list says that my motherboard (GA-K8NF-9) on-board ethernet doesn't work (it's an nve). Well, with 6-STABLE as of a few weeks ago, it "worked", but seemed to lose interrupts pretty regularly (with an X2 in dual-core mode), and so go into a time-out mode. In my experience, it would always pull out of that and keep going, but the whole-system pause of a few seconds was painful, so I'm running a plug-in ethernet card at the moment. I expect this problem to go away with time. My current main bug bear (not a big one) is that there isn't much third-party driver support for the AMD64 version, yet. My Nvidia graphics card is currently running the xorg vesa driver because (a) the xorg nv driver doesn't always initialize it properly and (b) NVidia themselves only do FreeBSD-i386. My OSS sound card driver only starts in single-processor mode. At least they produce an AMD version. I could get around all of this by running in i386 mode, but part of the point of this system is to play with the amd64 instruction set... The OS itself works beautifully. For all the comments about SATA-RAID, well, that may be a problem, but I'm running a pair of SATA disks and using ccd to stripe the main (non-boot) partitions together, and it works a bomb. Cheers, -- Andrew