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

Message

AnXa · Post by **AnXa** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 12:55 pm

Sure, try amd64 gentoo out. You cannot lose anything but time. It's working fine here. Somewhat problems with some commercial games I have had thought. And bootsplash/Gensplash in very very difficul to get working. Nothing bigger thought. Some apps aren't willing to compile in 64bit mode like rpm, but so what? e17 is same thing. I haven't been able to compile imlib2 cause of it.

electrofreak · Post by **electrofreak** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 6:20 pm

true... 64-bit could come a long way in the next 6 months or so. We shall see.

Also... I will never buy ATI, so I'm not worried about that.

brettlpb · Post by **brettlpb** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:18 am

Question, if I were to "go 64" and build a native 64 Gentoo machine... and I didn't install the 32-bit emulation libraries (for things like wine)... what all would I be missing?

In other words, does anyone run a pure-64 system, with no 32-bit binaries or wierd library workarounds? No openoffice, etc... what other programs won't work if I only use native 64-bit stuff?

It seems like such an annoying hack to deal with all the emulation junk, just to compile something like wine which I'd never use, or openoffice, etc. But if I can't run mplayer I'd be pissed.

LaNcom · Post by **LaNcom** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 11:47 am

No, 32bit compat libs are no weird hack, and no real emulation (no performance hit). It's one of the best features of AMD64 (and way better than Itanium's 32bit emulation). And the 32bit and 64bit libraries are clearly seperated.

Anyway, if you don't want to install the libs (and compile a kernel without 32bit support), you'll miss OpenOffice, every binary Netscape plugin, 99% of all commercial applications, all commercial games other than UT2004, Wine, Cedega, Crossover Office, 32bit media codecs - well, I think that's all...

brettlpb · Post by **brettlpb** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:55 pm

You make a good point... so if I installed the 32bit libs, I would mostly just compile mplayer in 32bit (for the codecs)... aside from that (and maybe games) I have no plans for OpenOffice or Wine, etc.

And I thought the Netscape plugins didn't work anyways, and I would just be using 64bit Konqueror with binary 32bit plugins, and some Konqueror patch?

Post by **pjp** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 5:00 pm

UberLord wrote: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!

I have the same two gripes, only my opinion is reversed; I would like to see Flash die (it shouldn't be used as a primary website component IMO). Having a 32-bit chroot environment is a real pain. I'm contemplating rebuilding a 32-bit only system.

Elim · Post by **Elim** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 12:11 am

I have presantly got a 2400 xp and i was wondering would upgrading this to a 3500+ make much difference to my performance and would it be be worth the hastle of not having much native 64 bit binaries... eg cedega and not being able to use any of the other wine derivatives.

landon · Post by **landon** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 12:21 am

Nope. Just wait for it to mature.

Wait until more pci-x components show up on the shelves. Even then, it's probably better to wait for the prices to drop somewhat.

Or, you could do what I do, and spend $200 every three months on computer components that you can't live without. It's a much better upgrade practice than simply splurging on a new system (mobo, chip, gfx) all in one go.

ewan.paton · Post by **ewan.paton** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:04 am

landon wrote:Nope. Just wait for it to mature.

Wait until more pci-x components show up on the shelves. Even then, it's probably better to wait for the prices to drop somewhat.

Or, you could do what I do, and spend $200 every three months on computer components that you can't live without. It's a much better upgrade practice than simply splurging on a new system (mobo, chip, gfx) all in one go.

please call them pci-express componets, pci-x has been about for years in servers etc, normaly im not picky about names but if you giving hardware advice it can sometimes lead to confusion

anyway its basicly a ratio of how rich you are multiplied by geek factor devided by cost, the cpu you have now is probably fine but 64bit is so stable now i cant realy tell the difference between 32bit but you could always run the chip in 32bit mode at high speed anyway.

personly im a bit disapointed as i always thought moving to a new arcutecture would be fun with loads of stuff to test etc but i waited to long and now its all been sorted out

Jake · Post by **Jake** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:12 am

Elim wrote:I have presantly got a 2400 xp and i was wondering would upgrading this to a 3500+ make much difference to my performance and would it be be worth the hastle of not having much native 64 bit binaries... eg cedega and not being able to use any of the other wine derivatives.

WINE works on AMD64. I run Word and Excel XP in CrossOver Office. All you need to do is enable 32-bit binary support in the kernel. I also run a 32-bit Firefox for flash and I have a 32-bit copy of MPlayer installed as /usr/local/bin/mplayer32 to play WMV and Quicktime.
EDIT: another option is to use the Athlon64 as a faster 32-bit chip, as ewan.paton mentioned

That said, I'm thrifty so I generally recommend keeping hardware until it becomes painfully slow.

Elim · Post by **Elim** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:32 pm

Personally i think i should wait, all this talk of 32 bit compatability libraries is making me dread having to have numerous coppies of all the libraies and massively longer compile times... i hate complexities. I think ill wait till its hopelessly slow

Is it the general consensus from all of you guys that the norm will be 64 bit in the future or will people just not bother with it?
will technology go back to x86 being the mainstream?
Im interested to know your views on this.

remember concord its way better than a boaing 747 yet its grounded in a hanger and theres thousands of 747s flying as i type. tecknology doesnt always go the way the guys inventing it want/think it will.

Interestingly though intel is developing dual core x86 cpus (2 cores in the same cpu) which means that smp might become the mainstream and maybe programs and games will take advantage of this like they do mmx now... who knows. I think ill wait and see what happens with the market and see what emerges as the mainstream and then buy into it im not exactly loaded so blowing my money on an architecture which just flops and noone uses.

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:57 pm

will technology go back to x86 being the mainstream?

64-bit is x86 and it is mainstream in the server environment (Athlon MP, Xeon, etc). I think going 64-bit is a good idea if you want that speed boost and geek factor. It's not worth it if you're just going to run windows, but if you're going to run Gentoo then go for it - it's not any more expensive than a decent Athlon XP system anyway.

Gherald · Post by **Gherald** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:59 pm

ewan.paton wrote:please call them pci-express componets, pci-x has been about for years in servers etc, normaly im not picky about names but if you giving hardware advice it can sometimes lead to confusion

Right, the correct abbreviation is pci-e

Elim, also note that you can run plain vanilla 32-bit gentoo on an Athlon64 chip just fine.

ewan.paton · Post by **ewan.paton** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:59 pm

amds were designed for dual cores from the outset and have demonstrated a quad core cpu on a 939 socket with minor bios changes, intels next gen chip will efectively still be based around a pentium pro albeit hevily tweaked.

prescot cpus already have 64bit extentions but are disabled at the factory, microsoft is bringing out a port of windws to amd64 once intel tells them its ok and we will see a lot more progress for consumer apps, big companies have already started to move there code over

i tend to think of the 64bit extentions as an extreme feature extention, while it may not be as backwards compatible as floating point units like sse but will be used more and more just with different binaries.

with regards to what intel is doing, dont worry about it amd is setting the agenda for the next couple of years and the mobile area is the only place intel has any lead, its their own fault for letting marketing men tell their engineers what to do

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 4:12 pm

ewan.paton wrote:amds were designed for dual cores from the outset and have demonstrated a quad core cpu on a 939 socket with minor bios changes, intels next gen chip will efectively still be based around a pentium pro albeit hevily tweaked.

prescot cpus already have 64bit extentions but are disabled at the factory, microsoft is bringing out a port of windws to amd64 once intel tells them its ok and we will see a lot more progress for consumer apps, big companies have already started to move there code over

i tend to think of the 64bit extentions as an extreme feature extention, while it may not be as backwards compatible as floating point units like sse but will be used more and more just with different binaries.

with regards to what intel is doing, dont worry about it amd is setting the agenda for the next couple of years and the mobile area is the only place intel has any lead, its their own fault for letting marketing men tell their engineers what to do

I fully agree with you - AMD are leading the way - rock on!

Elim · Post by **Elim** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:09 pm

I would still like to see what happens in the market giving it some time to see whats going to happen. Put it this way i dont get that much money and when i do i want to make sure what im getting isn't going to be obselete in 3 months when 128 bit cpus come out...

Hang on a minute! are there not 512 bit graphics processors on the commercial market already!

Matrox Parhelia 8x TripleHead 128MB DDR (AGP)
- 512-bit GPU
- 256-bit DDR memory interface
- 128MB DDR memory
- High performance 2D, 3D & video
- Triple-RGB, Dual-DVI, TV output
- Surround Design and Surround Gaming
- DualHead-HF and TripleHead Desktop
- 16x Fragment Antialiasing
- UltraSharp Display Output technology
- 10-bit GigaColor technology
- Matrox PrecisionCAD driver for AutoCAD®
- Realtime Display Color Adjustment
- PureVideo Preview
- AGP 8X

So if there are 512 bit graphics processors isn't it likely that in a few years we'll be seeing new 512/256 bit cpus? or is it totally farfetched and are gpus drastically different in every way?

Can u imagine lining up all the pins on a 512 bit cpu lol microscope and robotic helper included... Intel have a solution to this problem though, they give it to the motherboard manufactures to sort out and a flat based processor (socket 775) is born

About the amd leading the way thing, yes it does in technology but intel is bigger it has more customers and at the end of the day is making more money.
Intel is a pain though they change they're platform every five minutes so you have to buy the latest motherboard with the latest intel chipset... they're laughing all the way to the bank.

I perfer Amd but they seem to recently at least have changed they're platform a lot from socket a to 754 to 939 and another socket for the opteron. In that respect they seem to be copying intel. Intel is coppying everything from numbering system to the dual cores... Maybe one day intel will fall beind on their game of catch up and actually come up with something new and creative. Could this mean 128 bit cpus?

Ok so the 64 bit chips can run 32 bit systems is it actually any faster than what ive got (2400 xp vs amd 64 3500+ running in 32 bit mode) if so how much?

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:14 pm

Well PS2s are 128-bit (or are they 256-bit?) and the age old N64 is 64-bit...

If a manufacturer wanted to make a 512-bit CPU then they could, fairly easily. The number of bits isn't really the thing which makes it fast. One driving force for 64-bits is that in 32-bit you can only accomodate 4GB RAM, whereas in 64-bit it's 64GB, which is desired by servers!

Elim · Post by **Elim** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:30 pm

Ah yes i forgot "marketing stratergy". They will continue to make money of cheaper older technology for as long as possible and only introduce something new if and when the competition does or the market stagnates/theres a need.

If the 64 bits doesn't make a large difference how come 64 bit processors with similar clock speeds are more powerful?

ewan.paton · Post by **ewan.paton** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:45 pm

Elim wrote:Ah yes i forgot "marketing stratergy". They will continue to make money of cheaper older technology for as long as possible and only introduce something new if and when the competition does or the market stagnates/theres a need.

If the 64 bits doesn't make a large difference how come 64 bit processors with similar clock speeds are more powerful?

same reason 686 cpus are faster than 586's better design

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:51 pm

Indeed.

You can't compare just the name. It's like saying well how come there is no difference between a Duron 1000 and an Athlon 1000. The simple difference is that they are completely different! Similarly you cannot compare directly an Athlon64 and an AthlonXP. AMD simply have moved to 64-bit as it's the next step forward.

scharkalvin · Post by **scharkalvin** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 6:00 pm

intels next gen chip will efectively still be based around a pentium pro albeit hevily tweaked.

Actually Intel's last P6 family chip was the PIII. The P6 is the family that started with the Pentium Pro. This design had the L2 cache on a separate die located in the same package as the cpu. The Pentium II moved this die off chip in a new package (slot 1). Then as Moore's law allowed it the
cache was moved back onto the same chip as the cpu (PIII). Some instruction tweeks happened, but still the same basic P6 (686) design.
The Pentium 4 is actually a new design, the P7 or 786.
I'm not sure where the Xeon cpu's fit in, but I think they are based on
both the P6 and P7 designs.

Elim · Post by **Elim** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 6:15 pm

So how do processors work then?

(please bear in mind im not studying computer science yet... although i hope to be in the future)

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 6:15 pm

Xeons are 64-bit remember though.

mattjgalloway · Post by **mattjgalloway** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:10 pm

A processor is a microcontroller which knows certain instructions and acts upon binary numbers. These numbers are a certain amount of bytes long. A short signed floating point number is 16 bits long and a long signed floating point number is 32 bits long. This is where 64-bit processors can leap ahead of 32-bit ones and start using a full 64 bit length number, or at least process it in one clock cycle.

Read this for more info:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/microprocessor.htm

Or perhaps the lecture notes of my uni course:
[Ok, so maybe you can't access these, oopsie!]

Happy reading!

Elim · Post by **Elim** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:02 pm

i had a read, probably at the same time you answered the question its beyond my understanding of electronics and logic for the most part but i got the jist of it. As for the notes this is what i was greeted with:

Forbidden Access
The page you asked for exists, but you aren't allowed to read it at the moment.

Some of our pages can only be read by browsers run within Cambridge University, and some have even more restricted access. If you're a member of the department, then you can run a Web browser from a Teaching System machine to have access to all our files on the WWW.
Updated in April 2000
tpl@eng.cam.ac.uk

So i have read that the hammer/amd 64 can run 32 bit code natively does it require special code in the program to tell it to use 32 bit mode instead of 64bit code?

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

Is it worth upgrading to 64 bit?

Re: Is it worth upgrading to 64 bit?

interesting