[Fwd: Re: What to install on an amd64 machine?]

[Robert L Cochran]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: What to install on an amd64 machine?
Date: 	Mon, 27 Dec 2004 19:44:27 -0500
From: 	Robert L Cochran <cochranb at speakeasy.net>
To: 	Alexander Volovics <awol at home.nl>
References: 	<20041227143720.GA4934 at home.nl>



I have the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard with the Athlon 64 3500+ 
(the new chips built on 90 nanometer technology...that's the Winchester 
core I think) cpu. I installed FC3 x86_64 without any hesitation. 
Actually I've been using the x86_64 version of FC3 ever since it was in 
beta, starting with the 'test2' beta release. The AMD 64 has such superb 
performance that I have no plans to go back to the Intel platform. And 
I'm not missing anything. I have every single application that I had 
before. The difference is that the 64 bit processor is far, far faster 
and hence conserves my valuable time. I can literally do more. One thing 
that really opened my eyes is how fast MySQL (64 bit binaries) can 
crunch through tables with 110,000 rows.

You really must install the latest BIOS update for the motherboard.

Other than that, you should have no problems at all.

Perhaps in a year I'll upgrade to a newer motherboard and a faster AMD 
CPU. For now, I am a very happy camper.

Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA


Alexander Volovics wrote:

>In 2 weeks time I will be getting an amd64 machine and I have
>been reading up on possible problems.
>Because the answers to the questions I would like answered are
>contaminated with hardware/software issues when googling or reading
>mailing lists I hope to get some unequivocal answers here.
>
>- Can you install FC3-i386 on an amd64 machine without problems?
>  Can the FC3-i386 kernel and drivers handel the hardware without
>  problems?
>
>- Looking at the packages contained in FC3-x86_64 I see both i386
>  and x86_64 versions for a lot of things. For example:
>  hal-0.4.0-10.i386.rpm and hal-0.4.0-10.x86_64.rpm.
>  Are the i386 versions included for 'compat' reasons, so you can
>  run i386 apps under FC3-x86_64?
>  And are they installed by default when doing a standard workstation
>  install or do you add them if necessary?
>  If they are available for 'compat' reasons are they sufficient for
>  all i386 apps I would like to run or do you sometimes have to add
>  extra i386 libraries?
>  Can i386 libraries always coexist with x86_64 libraries without
>  problems?
>
>- Do up2date/yum function faultlessly when adding i386 apps to
>  a machine running FC3-x86_64.
>
>- If both FC3-i386 and FC3-x86_64 can run on an amd64 machine without
>  problems are there significant advantages for the x86_64 version?
>
>- I will be getting a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum board with an Athlon64
>  3500+ socket 399 and an UDMA100 hard drive. Does anybody know of
>  any special problems when installing either FC3-i386 or FC3-x86_64?
>
>Alexander
>
>  
>