amd64 - 32bit vs 64bit. Should I switch?

can-o-worms · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2004 Posts: 8

I just installed gentoo on a box with a K8V mobo, athlon64 3400+ with 2 raided 160gig harddisks, everything is up and running fine and fast but i just wonder if the whole 64bit thing is worth the hassel.

If i set my CHOST to i686-pc-linux-gnu , I'll be back to a regular x86 machine right?

There are just so many things that don't compile, and i really don't have time to mess with ebuilds everytime i want to install something.
But my main question is.... what is the real benefit of a 64bit system? Of course this is a question i should have asked before i went out and bought all this gear... guess i didn't really know what i was in for.

So if anyone would like to tell me what i would lose by changing my CHOST flags and reinstalling and if i am likely to run into any other problems in the process I would really appreciate it.
Thank you

ewan.paton · Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2004 5:59 pm Post subject:

im kind of in the same boat as you, just bought a amd64 cause my old server went bang but the way i understand it the 64bit registers do have extra stuff in them which will boost performance, an example was encription program which was rewritten specificly for amd64 because of the extra registers it nearly doubled the performance at the same clock,

that said we are taking about an app what was rewritten not just recompiled and before it was actually slower then in 32bit mode so it is a gradual process, the up side is you get a monster processor anyway

personaly i will probably keep a normal 32bit install and play with 64bit just for laughs but i recon it will be another few years till the majority of opensource software is written to take full use of the 64bit stuff{1}, probably over a decade till most m$ does

{1}i tend to think of it along the same lines as when i bought my 1st pc i payed a little extra for a P11 rather than getting a top pentium, p11's are arguably still useable while pentiums were always a bit slow and totaly past it now
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Tobenator · Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2004 7:04 pm Post subject:

Altogether, unless you have some special app., compiling a 64-bit system is not worth the hassle. However, it's definitely a technology that's gonna come and stay, especially when you consider the prices. Why buy a 32-bit Xeon, if you can get a 64-bit Opteron for less (Opteron 244 vs. Xeon 3.06 for example)?
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blueworm · l33t Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 962

Depends what you use youre PC for.
For gaming it is a complete waste of time.
I used it for 3 months. And I cant name a single app in which it is faster.

ewan.paton · Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2004 8:10 pm Post subject:

can-o-worms · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2004 Posts: 8

Thanks for all the input guys, i really appreciate it.
I found last night that the cannon bjcups stuff doesn't seem to want to work either...
As much as i would like to help everyone squash a few 64bit bugs i just don't have that sort of time at the moment.
Thanks alot

zinion · Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 9:27 am Post subject:

With gcc 3.3 I wasn't sure. But since I recompiled with 3.4, which supports the flags recommended by AMD I got a significant performance boost.

KDE and it's Apps i.e. start much faster.
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Akhouk · Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 3:26 pm Post subject:

I guess it really depends what you are doing. Personally for me, install went like a dream and my machine is damn fast. I haven't really had a problem with apps I want to use not working and I am quite happy to fix a couple of things and report bugs/patches if I do.

I mainly use my machine for development work and all my development tools work and my gnome desktop works. So I am happy.

Besides, I have my old x86 machine on a KVM so if there is an app that doesn't work with amd64..... my old machine is just 3 key presses away.

nestal · n00b Joined: 11 Apr 2003 Posts: 34 Location: Milky Way

maybe the performance boost isn't very noticable, but having sizeof(int*) == 8 is fun enough :lol:

whig · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 973 Location: New Zealand

sulu · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:51 am Post subject:

Uhm, in 90ies i worked on SUN and SGI-platforms, all of them with 64-bit.
Switching over to x86 everything felt somewhat "narrow".
So now with by new AMD-64 i feel like coming home a bit.
I would not even consider to buy a 32-bit box now. 32-bit is a dying branch of the computer industry. In nomal live the gain might not be noticeable but if you do nuber crunching all double precision fit into one word which is nice.

ewan.paton · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 5:01 pm Post subject:

you wernt kidding about the hassle, the livecd doesnt find my nforce3 based lan card and i cant chroot from a 32bit install aparently, oh well i needed a new install to build for my laptop i will build this then reocmpile as 64bit to get going unless anyone knows a way i can chroot in from a 32bit gentoo partition
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Psych0 · Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 2:08 am Post subject:

Yeah, 64 bit might be a hassle here and there. But my AMD 64 3400+ laptop can crank out some decent compile times. This puppy screams

--glenn
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LaNcom · Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 3:25 am Post subject:

Well, I'm on gentoo/ AMD64 since 1.4, and just installed it on my fathers Athlon64 notebook. I can't say I had any problems that really had to do with the system being 64bit (except for some Nvidia driver issues back then, when they had no 32bit compatibility), everything just worked...

And now, as AMD64 becomes more and more widespread, we'll see quite a few performance increases (MPlayer has 64bit assembly now, the next xvid will also be 64bit optimized, and I'm sure GCC 4 will bring another improvement). I run Softimage|XSI on my box, it's fast and perfectly stable - and, as soon as I can lay my greedy hands on a Mental Ray AMD64 build, it will also be a lot faster... :-)

LaserGuidedBunnyRabbit · Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 4:06 am Post subject:

UT2k4 runs a lot faster. If you like that game, then go for amd64. It's the only big game to fully support amd64 (that I know of).

electrofreak · l33t Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 713 Location: Ohio, USA

I'm gonna be building a new system this upcoming summer, and I want to basicly know if I should get AMD64 or not. From what I've seen, its great, but, I'm not sure if everything works well in gentoo or not. Also, if I setup a 64-bit gentoo build, then will I be able to build 32-bit apps and still be able to run them flawlessly?

Economicly, it'd be smart to go ahead and get 64 bit, as its the new technology now and its where all systems will be going in the near future, but I don't really want to get it if its going to be more hassel than its worth.

I just want to hear how everyone's experience have been with AMD64.
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UberLord · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 1:05 am Post subject:

I've only got 2 gripes

1) No flash for browsers - unless the browser is built 32-bit
2) no support for win32codecs needed for some movies

I can live without 2, but macromedia really need to get off their asses and release a 64-bit flash!

andrewbarr · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 1:11 am Post subject:

I've avoided 64-bit because it's too new. Some software either won't build 64-bit or has issues, and some hardware drivers won't work with 64-bit either (especially those with a 32-bit x86 binary-only component). It's gonna depend on the software you want to run, as well as the hardware you have. Check that hardware drivers will build and run well on 64-bit systems, and see if the ebuilds for the software you want have amd64 keywords on them.

And I guess I don't know what you mean when you say it'd be economically smart to get 64-bit. The opposite is true. 64-bit is brand new, and new technology always carries a premium in price. And if 64-bit does become more common, it'll put downward price pressure on 32-bit CPUs. That's a big if, though. Us geeks may salivate at the concept of a 64-bit desktop or laptop, but the average people who make up the real buying power in the PC industry are going to be unwilling to pay any kind of premium of any kind for this. It doesn't do anything for them. That keeps the price high, because popularity will bring the price down.

I don't mean to say that 64-bit is bad, but it's going to be a premium feature for sometime to come.

Andrew
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electrofreak · l33t Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 713 Location: Ohio, USA

Well, it will be my main desktop machine, so it will need to be a nice multimedia desktop system that plays games well and watches movies. Also, it will runs servers such as apache and mysql and sshd. It seems to me like 64-bit is still sorta in its beta stages. I love beta software and discovering bugs in beta software, but when my whole entire system is running on beta, it doesn't seem as exciting.

I dunno, I tend to agree with andrewbarr... it is too new. While it performs well, it just doesn't quite do everything I need it to do smoothly yet. Most likely, before it is common, I will be building another system anyway. this will be the...4th system in 5 or 6 years, so, chances are there will be a 5th system in a year or to anyway.

ewan.paton · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:22 am Post subject:

not sure of your timescale as summer could be now depending upon the hemisphere but ive seen a socket 754 for £88 and the boards are getting cheap, while these arent budget levels they are getting close.

what else would you buy a p4 with 31stage pipline, no upgrade path and more heat than a space heater. or you could get the very old athlon xp, i grant you these can be dirt cheap but in 32bit mode the amd64 hands them their ass not to mention cool&quiet, sse2 and temp protection, encription/noex registers etc, a year ago yes they were premium chips but now they are medium level and worth the cash
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bos_mindwarp · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 7:20 am Post subject:

himpierre · l33t Joined: 31 Aug 2002 Posts: 867 Location: Berlin

zinion · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 11:01 am Post subject:

AHAH!!! I hate these chickens telling it's to new and there is no software for over a year now. WAKE UP! It is definitly NOT new and there is allready A LOT OF software only FEW things don't work.

But the real point is: It will always stay new and there will never be software, if nobody starts using it!! All those people using arguments like this say nothing else as: "Uh ...it's cool and fast and I want to use it - but others should test it for me, make it ready and when it's perfect I will use it too..."

Many people told me same "to new etc"-shit. I bought my amd64, I installed 64bit gentoo and I really love it. Nearly everything works.
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babo · Guru Joined: 10 Aug 2004 Posts: 477 Location: Ljubljana

Agree!
Weather you say it's new or it isn't you definitively won't be able to say that by the time you're going to buy a new machine(as you say in summer). And besides problems with ati, I think you don't have to worry about a thing, couse amd64 is running exelent now already.

LaNcom · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 11:09 am Post subject: