Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:47:59 +0100 From: Michel Talon <talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dell 2850 use 32 or 64 bit? Message-ID: <20081226144759.GA3715@lpthe.jussieu.fr>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Tim Kellers wrote: > Thanks for the reply. I already know it is 64 bit capable. I 'm > interested in finding out if their are measurable performance advantages > to running it using 64 v 32 bit FreeBSD. For the type of use of the OP (databases, etc.) i don't know, but for scientific computations we observe a massive performance advantage running in 64 bits mode (by this i mean more than 20%, i have seen some Maple formal computations run 100% faster). The only problem with 64 bits mode is that some ports may have problems, but, as far as i know, these ports are more desktop oriented than server oriented. For a server i don't see a reason to run in 32 bits mode. Contrary to some frequent assertions the increase in size of binaries is extremely limited as can easily be checked. This is very largely compensated by the increase in the number of registers. The possibility of using more than 4 gigs memory is just one advantage of 64 bits mode, and by the way, very few of our machines have more than 4 gigs memory, and they don't lack it at all. -- Michel TALON
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20081226144759.GA3715>