Re: Is 64 bit Fedora OK? With which CPU?

Dave wrote:

...
The x86-64 architecture brings a bunch of additional features/ optimisations in addition to an enlarged address space.

Very interesting! Which ones? Where are they discussed? Above all, are they important for power desktop users?

There are 16 general purpose registers rather than just the 8 in 32-bit mode. This means registers do not have to be pushed to the stack as often, resulting in fewer memory accesses, improving performance. I think that is the major one.

A simple test with Blender (www.blender3d.com) a while back resulted in greater than 2x performance (took less than half the time) rendering an animation when using 64-bit Blender in 64-bit Fedora over 32-bit. I actually used Windows for the 32-bit version, I guess I really ought to test 32-bit program in 64/32-bit Linux as well, but just the magnitude of the improvement is impressive. In general things that require a lot of processing will probably see a significant performance boost. Interactive things (email, web browsing) can be done well on a fairly old machine because humans are slow (comparatively), so of course you won't really notice anything there.

As far as processors/chipsets: AMD and nForce4. I have an Athlon 64 3500+ and an nForce4 based Gigabyte motherboard and they seem to work great with FC4 x86_64. Athlon 64s support frequency scaling (which you wanted), though I have not seen it do any (noticeable) CPU fan speed adjustments (using stock fan). But overall it is pretty quiet. Not silent but much quieter than my previous system (Athlon XP). Some noise is from the graphics card (nVidia GeForce 6600 GT) and you could probably stick with a fan-less one if you don't need great 3D graphics.

Jonathan

Cristian Sava

2 Jan 2 Jan

5 a.m.

New subject: Is 64 bit Fedora OK? With which CPU?

Hi all,

I have some new boxes in front of me: - Dual Intel Xeon 3600 EM64T, 8GB - Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB, Asus A8N-E, 200GB Sata 2 - Athlon 64 3200+, 512MB, 120GB Sata I use FC4 x86_64 & Windows x64 on Athlon 64 and FC4 i386 on Xeon. Dual Xeon 3600 is 2.8 faster than Dual Intel PIII 1.13 Ghz & 1GB with a Postgresql database. Athlon 64 works much better with Windows x64 than FC4 x86_64. I wait for FC5 RC2

Just my feeling: Athlon 64 or Opteron are much, much better than Intel EM64T on 64 bit SO.

C. S.

__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com

D. Hugh Redelmeier

12:38 p.m.

New subject: Is 64 bit Fedora OK? With which CPU?

| From: Cristian Sava smc_ro@yahoo.com

In what way?

I have no big problems with FC4 x86_64.

There are so few native applications for "Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" that I'm surprised that you find it useful. What are you using it for?

| Just my feeling: Athlon 64 or Opteron are much, much | better than Intel EM64T on 64 bit SO.

What is SO?

In what way are AMD products so much better?

I know that Intel is missing the 64-bit I/O stuff; this could have performance impacts for database applications and the like.

The Intel CPUs are currently greater power hogs (but so were older AMD chips).

Intel multi-core chips have more of a memory bus bottleneck.

Intel chips take more cycles to get a task done, but the clock is faster, so most tasks are done in roughly the same time. The final tuning variable is price -- rather carefully set by the manufacturer.

All in all, I think that the differences are modest. I don't see a reason to say that AMD chips are "much, much better". (The only x86_64 systems that I've bought have had AMD chips, so I did think that AMD chips were somewhat better.)

Paul F. Johnson

1:02 p.m.

New subject: Is 64 bit Fedora OK? With which CPU?

Hi,

...

There are so few native applications for "Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" that I'm surprised that you find it useful. What are you using it for?

Simple reason for that is that WinXP 64 is actually the same as what happened with Win95 - it basically just doubled up the bus and called itself a 32 bit system when it was still a 16 bit one. Running WinXP 64 is completely pointless as there is no advantage in any way. It may change with Vista, but I somehow doubt it.

TTFN

Paul

-- main(t,_,a) char*a;{return!0<t?t<3?main(-79,-13,a+main(-87,1-_,main(-86, 0,a+1 )+a)):1,t<_?main(t+1,_,a ):3,main (-94,-27+t,a)&&t==2?_<13?main(2, _+1,"%s %d %d\n"):9:16:t<0?t<-72?main(_,t,"@n'+,#'/*{}w+/w#cdnr/+,{}r/*de} +,/*{*+,/w{%+,/w#q#n+,/#{l,+,/n{n+,/+#n+,/#;#q#n+,/+k#;*+,/'r :'d*'3,}{w+K w'K:'+}e#';dq#'l q#'+d'K#!/+k#;q#'r}eKK#}w'r}eKK{nl]'/#;#q#n'){)#}w'){){nl] '/+#n';d}rw' i;# ){nl]!/n{n#'; r{#w'r nc{nl]'/#{l,+'K {rw' iK{;[{nl]'/w#q#n 'wk nw' iwk{KK{nl]!/w{%'l##w#' i; :{nl]'/*{q#'ld;r'}{nlwb!/*de}'c ;;{nl'-{} rw]'/+,}##'*}#nc,',#nw]'/+kd'+e}+;#'rdq#w! nr'/ ') }+}{rl#'{n' ')# }'+}## (!!/"):t<-50?_==*a?putchar(31[a]):main(-65,_,a+1):main((*a=='/')+t,_,a+1 ):0<t?main(2,2,"%s"):*a=='/'||main(0,main(-61,*a,"!ek;dc i@bK'(q)-[w]*%n+r3#l ,{}:\nuwloca-O;m .vpbks,fxntdCeghiry"),a+1);}

D. Hugh Redelmeier

1:54 p.m.

New subject: Is 64 bit Fedora OK? With which CPU?

| From: Paul F. Johnson paul@all-the-johnsons.co.uk

| Running WinXP 64 | is completely pointless as there is no advantage in any way.

I don't think that this is the case. The larger address space can make really fat programs wallow better. Database programs are the standard example. You don't even have to have more than 4G of real memory to see this, but I'm sure that it helps.

Most of the advantage requires the program to be native x86_64. Not being a follower of MS Windows, I don't know what MS Windows applications are available in native x86_64.

Paul F. Johnson

2:14 p.m.

New subject: Is 64 bit Fedora OK? With which CPU?

Hi,

...

Most of the advantage requires the program to be native x86_64. Not being a follower of MS Windows, I don't know what MS Windows applications are available in native x86_64.

I think you can count true commercial x64 Windows apps on one hand and none of them are from MS. 99% of the drivers are broken and a lot of hardware just fails.

Not nice. Stick with Linux I say.

TTFN

Paul

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Cristian Sava
D. Hugh Redelmeier
dondi_2006
Jonathan Berry
Paul F. Johnson