Gentoo Forums

I have a Dell laptop with following config
Intel Core 2 Duo T9600
2GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM
Intel GMA 4500

This is my company laptop and i've decided to move it to gentoo as well.
Now question is whether i should go for x86 or amd64.

I'll be using Sun Virtual Box quite a lot
There is no chance of any RAM upgrade.

I've used x86 in most of my machines till now
From what i've read there's little performance difference between two archs.

I did notice that gnome went stable in amd64 weeks before same for x86.
Is this true in general? What would you guys advice

Try amd64 if it does not suit you wipe it and install x86

Personally i never considered x86 on my 64 bit capable machine

coolniit,

With 2G of RAM, you are a borderline case. It depends what you use the system for.
If you do the kind of work that would benefit from doing 64 bit arithmetic without the CPU needing to several goes, go 64bit.

If its office applications, 32 bit will be fine.

coolniit wrote: I did notice that gnome went stable in amd64 weeks before same for x86.
Is this true in general? What would you guys advice

This is due to most dev work/new installs are being done on amd64 arch these days, as x86 is slowly fading and falling behind as a result.

dol-sen wrote: This is due to most dev work/new installs are being done on amd64 arch these days, as x86 is slowly fading and falling behind as a result.

or because amd64 team lack manpower more than x86 one so they just push stable package easier (yeah i mean quality is lowered) than x86

as you see, just a point of view, not to start a battle, just to show a weak argument

@krinn i really doubt that

But i really thought i would get some good answers here but not to be.

Anyone from gentoo developer wish to comment as you guys will have a better idea about this.

I just want to know which of the archs is updated first amd64 or x86.

coolniit wrote:I just want to know which of the archs is updated first amd64 or x86.

Just have a look here : http://znurt.org/
check a couple of apps and you will have the objective answer you are looking for.

#NULL

#NULL

GWilliam wrote:

coolniit wrote:There is no chance of any RAM upgrade.

That's a damn shame--especially since RAM is relatively dirt cheap these days.

The motherboard is likely incompatible. I have a Dell Inspiron E1705 with a Core Duo T2400 and 2GB is the most its motherboard can officially use. Unofficially, some E1705 systems can use 4GB, but it is hit or miss.

I just want to know which of the archs is updated first amd64 or x86.

It really depends... I'm doing some arch-testing for x86, because that team is/was really a bit understaffed! (i also did not had much time lately for doing so)
But i think its more or less the nature of the thing.... x86 has traditionally the most packages, so more interdependencies which has to be tested!

(yeah i mean quality is lowered)

Not exactly true, as there are not many bugs that affect only one arch! If a failure is found, it gets corrected even for hppa! And believe it or not, the hppa and ia64 teams are sometime even faster than anyone else!
But we are doing our best to keep up with the others!
Thanks fauli, pawel, thomas and all the others who i forgot right now, but nevertheless do a really great job!

coolniit wrote:I just want to know which of the archs is updated first amd64 or x86.

If you use the unstable tree, they tend to be updated at the same time, although I think x86 sees packages stablize a little faster than amd64.

both arches amd64/x86 are quite up2date on stable packages. The choice should not be based on stable tree but on your real needs

nativemad wrote:

(yeah i mean quality is lowered)

Not exactly true

If it wasn't clear, it was just another weak argument but for x86 this time (i don't want the amd64 team to kick me).
Everyones knows amd64 team work as great as the x86.

It's just, the amd64 devs IQ is lower than the x86 ones, not something we can blame them.











(oh jesus ! the last one was a joke too !!! we don't know amd64 devs IQ level, they didn't finish the tests yet).
(i'm in good mood today)

I use amd64 whenever I can. 64-bit software is better than 32-bit software in my book. I am not sure why anyone would want to use 32-bit software when they have the option of using 64-bit software.

Im using 64 becouse my server and aplication need 64 bit !

Shining Arcanine wrote:I use amd64 whenever I can. 64-bit software is better than 32-bit software in my book. I am not sure why anyone would want to use 32-bit software when they have the option of using 64-bit software.

Yeah and why not use the full power of a CPU too.

GWilliam wrote:Go with AMD64. It's far from perfect--actually... well, it sucks a bit*, but as others have pointed out, x86_64 is getting focus for new development. You'll probably need to adopt x86_64 sometime; you might as well do it now. Shitty Flash support and craptastic Java support has been available for AMD64 for a few years now.


________________________
*But at this point, I've no reason to believe that in a general sense, AMD64 sucks significantly more or less than 32-bit x86. Software in general is all pretty much in the shitter.

can you be more specific about what "sucks a bit"? i see that slight qualification but just as it is its all meaningless.

i'd also like examples of the crappy java support. just anti-java or a valid criticism? flash 64bit support was fine until adobe recently pulled the 64bit builds of the 10.1 release. so that is in fact, presently 'shitty' but 'a few years now' doesn't apply unless you just mean in an anti-flash sort of way.

I would only recommend x86_64 on machines that support it, and that's after using for a very long time now.

jonnevers wrote:

GWilliam wrote:Go with AMD64. It's far from perfect--actually... well, it sucks a bit*, but as others have pointed out, x86_64 is getting focus for new development. You'll probably need to adopt x86_64 sometime; you might as well do it now. Shitty Flash support and craptastic Java support has been available for AMD64 for a few years now.


________________________
*But at this point, I've no reason to believe that in a general sense, AMD64 sucks significantly more or less than 32-bit x86. Software in general is all pretty much in the shitter.

can you be more specific about what "sucks a bit"? i see that slight qualification but just as it is its all meaningless.

i'd also like examples of the crappy java support. just anti-java or a valid criticism? flash 64bit support was fine until adobe recently pulled the 64bit builds of the 10.1 release. so that is in fact, presently 'shitty' but 'a few years now' doesn't apply unless you just mean in an anti-flash sort of way.

I would only recommend x86_64 on machines that support it, and that's after using for a very long time now.

Well, x86_64 is a CISC ISA, so from that perspective, it is bad, but it still works fairly well despite that handicap.

Shining Arcanine wrote:

jonnevers wrote:

GWilliam wrote:Go with AMD64. It's far from perfect--actually... well, it sucks a bit*, but as others have pointed out, x86_64 is getting focus for new development. You'll probably need to adopt x86_64 sometime; you might as well do it now. Shitty Flash support and craptastic Java support has been available for AMD64 for a few years now.


________________________
*But at this point, I've no reason to believe that in a general sense, AMD64 sucks significantly more or less than 32-bit x86. Software in general is all pretty much in the shitter.

can you be more specific about what "sucks a bit"? i see that slight qualification but just as it is its all meaningless.

i'd also like examples of the crappy java support. just anti-java or a valid criticism? flash 64bit support was fine until adobe recently pulled the 64bit builds of the 10.1 release. so that is in fact, presently 'shitty' but 'a few years now' doesn't apply unless you just mean in an anti-flash sort of way.

I would only recommend x86_64 on machines that support it, and that's after using for a very long time now.

Well, x86_64 is a CISC ISA, so from that perspective, it is bad, but it still works fairly well despite that handicap.

/facepalm

I use a 64-bit version of Gentoo on a Core 2 Duo. I don't have any problems with it, but I don't notice any performance improvements either. Theoretically it has more registers & higher integer size (but FPRs were always 64bit even for IA32 right?), hence better IF the applications make use of em, but practically even things that involve a lot of computations like compression doesn't seem to have any improvement.

and , what's wrong with the use of CISC instructions (that sounds redundant) in x86_64?

Amity88,

The floating point registers on Intel/AMD 32 and 64 bit have always been 80 bits.
This leads to an interesting bug called the excess precision bug.

In short, it means that floating point arithmetic gives different answers depending on the -O flag you use to gcc, as intermediate results may be stored in 80 bits.
Rounding only occurs when a FPregister is committed to RAM. Even then, the 80 bit result is still in the FP register.

There are small gains from the wider data bus, larger caches and the faster path to RAM but there are only noticable speed increases for specialised applications.

NeddySeagoon,

hmm, Does that bug have a significant impact? I've always held the view that equality operators and floating point variables don't mix very well. Does compiling speed improve? and what about stuff like Matlab and SPICE? I know they do a lot of calculations.

Thanks for correcting me, I used to think that the FPRs were 64 bit wide.

NeddySeagoon wrote:The floating point registers on Intel/AMD 32 and 64 bit have always been 80 bits.

Er, I thought amd64 uses 128-bit SSE floating point for everything?

it's 80 when using fpu, and 128 when using SSEx set.
So no, amd64 don't use 128 except when told to do so (mfpmath=sse will higher it as it will use SSE instead of FPU)

And it have nothing to do with amd64, x86 also use SSE@128bits