Your opinion on AMD 64

stonie · Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 7:15 am Post subject: Your opinion on AMD 64

Hi Guys,
I've been thinking about switching to the AMD 64 platform. What are your experiences? How far is Gentoo Linux in this issue? What are your remarks from daily usage? Any comments and experience reports are highly welcome......

THX

kevdoig · Apprentice Joined: 03 May 2004 Posts: 171

seems to me to still be a bit buggy to be honest. From what i've read, its a good idea to have a 32bit, backup system for day to day use, and a 64-bit for experimenting. Could be wrong though. Sound like running your 64bit system in 32bit mode screams along at the moment anyway.

Vendicatore · Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 7:45 am Post subject:

I'm actualli running only gentoo64 enviroment, with a little partiton with gentoo32 for chrooting to assue compatibility to all existent software.
The 64bit one is almost complete, except for some browser's plugins (flash, for example), openoffice (binary 32bit only, at the moment) and video-players (they run, but you need a 32bit version for using with win32 codecs).
You also need an Nvidia GPU to have complite OpenGl support on 64bit enviroment.

Aggamemnon · Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 11:23 am Post subject:

I've found it excellent.

The only thing I use WinXP for is games (as I have an ATI card)

ProtectionFault · Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 11:30 am Post subject:

I'm running an AMD64 Laptop...
Only problems with some 32bit binaries and the drivers for the wlan chip
Everything else works perfect.
No use for Windoze... :twisted:

_________________
ASUS Z87-PLUS, i7-4770, 2x8GB DDR3-1600, 700W OCZ Power Supply, EVGA GTX760 4GB, 3TB HDD, Gentoo ~amd64 (3.10.10, dm-crypt full disk, awesome)

frytol · n00b Joined: 04 Aug 2004 Posts: 3

I'm using 2x Opteron 242 on TYAN K8S Pro and the performance is great.

emerge system took 30m18s (emerge of 67 ebuilds).

Evangelion · Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 12:14 pm Post subject:

From my POW: it kicks ass! I use 64bit system as my day-to-day desktop, and it runs smoothly and it runs FAST. Only problem for me are some 32bit codecs and flash. Those only work in 32bits. Other than that: smooth sailing!
_________________
My tech-blog | My other blog

Kow · Apprentice Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 227

The hardware itself is sweet stuff, the only problem that exist both on Windows and Linux is how to easily run 32-bit software/games in a 64-bit environment because most closed-source programs are still 32-bit only.
_________________
-Kow

torchZ06 · Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 11:11 pm Post subject:

been running gentoo on an opteron 150 for a few months now with no problems other than the above stated browser plug in and codec stuff. i just did my first emerge update using the proceedure outlined in this thread and it went off without a hitch (i haven't updated the 40 or so config files yet, so maybe i should knock on wood!)
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=163377&highlight=emerge+u

it's fast as hell too....

Corona688 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2004 Posts: 1204

I got my dual Opteron 242 mostly for fast compilation, and it seems my choice was right on the money. Opterons blow nearly everything out of the water in that respect. There's some iffiness with respect to video drivers - ATI doesn't support amd64, but some amd64 things like xorg support ATI anyway - but nvidia has actual binary drivers for amd64.

I'm still using a 32-bit browser for things like flash etc, but it's a web-browser, I don't care how many bits it is as long as it works well. If you're using vmware, this is abit of a rocky time for it as it is supported, but not well.
_________________
Petition for Better 64-bit ATI Drivers - Sign Here
http://www.petitiononline.com/atipet/petition.html

JamesRock · Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 4:01 am Post subject:

I've been using native amd64 for 2 weeks now and everything is running perfectly smoothly. Nothing has crashed, everything works perfectly and REALLY fast!

My only complaint is no ATI drivers.

RedBeard0531 · Guru Joined: 21 Sep 2002 Posts: 415 Location: maryland

first: If you have a radeon card >=9200 , as I do, evrything works just peachy. just compile your kernel /w radeon drm support and you can play games and have 3d screensavers (euphoria). It uses the open source drivers which work pretty well, but are slightly slower than the official ones.

second: if you emerge mozilla-firefox-bin, you dont need a chroot. Unfortunatly, we dont have something like that for movies

.

third: there are a few progams that need a 32bit chroot to work well. I sugest using the bind option in you fstab to bind your /home /root /usr/portage /tmp (needed to use x apps) and all your mounted directories since simlinks dont work in a chrooted environment.

Apps ive found not to work-
malsync and any prog that syncs with avantgo
hotwayd
win32codecs (duh!)
captive-ntfs (you need a 32 bit kernel for this

)
transcode and all related progs (too bad, 64bit would be sweet for this)
_________________
OH MY GOD! Kenny just killed Kenny!
That Basterd!

arrruken · n00b Joined: 28 Feb 2004 Posts: 48

Clarification, I think you meant to say less than or equal(<=) to a Radeon 9200, dont get people like me's hopes up. ATi hasnt given up specifications to anything higher than that yet.

stonie · Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 7:47 pm Post subject:

THNX

this sounds really sweet,
i will try to get my hands on a 3400+ with 1 MB L2 cache.
I have been really excited with this new technology and from what i've heard from you it sounds to be working once it's set up.
Excuse me if I didn't search the forums before, but how is it generally possible to run 32 bit programs in the 64 bit environement. Do you need to chroot into it or is a "compatible mode" available where you can run 32 bit binaries?

zebrapad · Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 8:59 pm Post subject:

Go for an AMD64 3500+ instead.
It uses socket 939, which will be supported till at least end of next year, giving you the ability to upgrade to at least a 4400+ (last time I checked the AMD roadmap).
I also heard mentions of a socket 939 DUAL CORE cpu...

Alpha_Beta · n00b Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 47 Location: Vancouver, BC

I, too, have been thinking of getting an AMD 64. I noticed that I can get a 3000 online with a mobo (MSI) and ram for $400 US. what does everyone think of the 3000? Are there any issues with MSI? I wanted to see how fast Never Winter Nights would run on it with fluxbox...

Are there any other mobos and chips you guys could think of getting? I probably don't have much more than $400.
_________________
AMD 64 3000+
MSI K8N Neo Platinum
512Mb Mushkin pc3200 ram
hda Western Digital 80GB special edition
hdb Seagate Barracuda 80GB 8mb buffer
Ensoniq/Creative PCI 1371
SyncMaster 753df
Linux user #344050 Get Counted!

DiscreteOnyxOrb · n00b Joined: 08 Apr 2004 Posts: 24

I've been running gentoo 64 for a few months now and it seems to be rock solid. It was surprisingly easy to set vmware up, so I jump over to it whenever I need to do something 32-bit. I was never able to boot from my SATA drives using grub (though i can mount them perfectly), but things might be better now.

Since I'm a student I downloaded StarOffice for free from Sun and it seems to be more stable than AbiWord and better at translating microsoft documents than OpenOffice (I still get some problems with cell formating in Excel tho).

I also tried out crossover office which worked okay but I wasn't able to get Java working and after benchmarking IE (for example) I found that things run faster in vmware, so what's the point?

Finally, I haven't really been able to get Java working. I can do simple things, but complex Java apps seem to hang (I've treid blackdown as well as the new beta from sun). In particular, using vectordesigner.invitrogen.com java hangs whenever I try to view a molecule.

Currently waiting for MATLAB64.

AnnaCr · n00b Joined: 15 Jul 2004 Posts: 27

Buy your ram carefully.

I had to swap out some ram with nice timings that I bought with an AMD64 MSI mobo for worse ram simply to get the computer to boot with more than 1 stick in. It'd never go through the testing process with the two sticks.

Galahad · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 126

I can second that. Read the compatibility list of your mainboard before you buy RAM. I had 1GB of MCI (small german manufacturer) PC400 RAM, which is usually cheap and fast, but my Asus A8V wouldn't even boot with it. Just black screen, nothing.
Now I'm happy with 1GB of Corsair XMS3200C2 RAM.

stonie · Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2004 11:03 am Post subject:

ok,
so getting a socket 939 mainboard seems to be the better choice. Anybody knows such a good board. I might buy the Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939. It has the new NVIDIA nforce3 250 GB. Can anybody comment on this?
Thanks.

nigelmcguinness · n00b Joined: 24 Jun 2004 Posts: 1

If you want to go wireless and use a Netgear card then you can't go 64-bit as there are no 64bit driver available.

True · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 4:17 pm Post subject:

kevdoig · Apprentice Joined: 03 May 2004 Posts: 171

_FD_ · n00b Joined: 06 Aug 2004 Posts: 37

If you want a quick check, which of your installed packages will work in amd64 try:

stonie · Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2004 5:46 pm Post subject:

Thanks a lot for your answers.
I'll have a look at that Asus MB, the code to figure out what packages are working on amd64 is in deed very useful.