FC on AMD64 anyone?

[Hitman1]

I'm thinking of upgrading my desktop to AMD64 processor / motherboard mainly to get a faster responsive desktop. can anyone here running fedora 64bit on AMD64 let me know how fast is it compared to i386 based fedora on pentium 4?

I'm trying to justify the investement

[drunkahol]

The AMD64 won't let you down whichever way you jump.

I've used 32-bit and 64-bit installs on my AMD rig throughout it's lifespan and never found performance to be an issue. The only downside about 64-bit installs is that there are certain applications completely absent from the 64-bit world (Flash being the biggest for me since the CBeebies website won't work and my daughter loves that site).

Cheers

Duncan

[mach_zero]

Originally Posted by drunkahol

The only downside about 64-bit installs is that there are certain applications completely absent from the 64-bit world (Flash being the biggest for me since the CBeebies website won't work and my daughter loves that site).

Which is the very thing that is holding me back from adopting a 64 bit system. Gonna patiently wait out some of these issues before I make the jump. I personally don't find the trade-off in perfomance gain worth the headaches....

[Hitman1]

Originally Posted by drunkahol

The AMD64 won't let you down whichever way you jump.

I've used 32-bit and 64-bit installs on my AMD rig throughout it's lifespan and never found performance to be an issue. The only downside about 64-bit installs is that there are certain applications completely absent from the 64-bit world (Flash being the biggest for me since the CBeebies website won't work and my daughter loves that site).

Cheers

Duncan

I remember reading somewhere that you can work around this by installing a 32bit browser. this way whenever you need flash, run the 32 bit browser, otherwise you stay in 64 bit. I might be mixing stuff though, but I do remember something like this.

How is the 64 bit processor in compiling big programs like the kernel for instance? do you see significant time reduction?

[drunkahol]

I've got Gentoo on one partition to play around with and the compile times are pretty quick. Never been bothered too much by any long waiting times. Any delay is probably more to do with my ancient 20Gb HD that I've been nursing for what seems like ages.

You certainly can install 32-bit packages such as Firefox. I've never done it though as I'm in an "ALL OR NOTHING" kind of mood with 64-bit. I either do it 100%, or I stick with 32-bit throughout.

Must admit that if I require a reinstall for any reason in the near future, it will be to FC4 32-bit at the moment. There are just too many things that I miss. The repos also seem to be WAY behind in supporting a raft of things (perhaps they just won't work on 64-bit - like WINE). I'd like to mess around with WINE in the next few months, so 32-bit FC4 appears to be winging it's way closer to my machine.

If you can live without these frills (or wait for the OpenSource version of them) then the system is very good. But it's the frills that make a system fun to use I think. The core needs to be rock solid, but you need to have some frills to give you that special smile.

Cheers

Duncan