Looking to upgrade my system. Your thoughts?

[Jonathan Berry]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:33:10 -0500, Robert Spangler
<bms at zoominternet.net> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm looking to upgrade my system with the following;
> 
> Asus A8V Deluxe (v. 2.0) K8T800 Pro Athlon 939-pin
> AMD 64 3500+ 512k 90nm (939)
> Corsair 1G DDR400
> ATI 9600 Pro w/128MB
> 
> Anyone see any problems here?  Should I be watching out for anything that FC3
> might give me a problem with?

Looks like a nice system.  I would advise against the ATi graphics
card, but I'm a little partial to nVidia, they seem to be doing a
better job at supporting Linux than ATi at the moment.  I can tell you
that my nVidia card (GeForce 440 Go) works just fine with the binary
drivers.  I've also seen an FX5200 work with the binary drivers
(though I don't recommend the card, your better off with a MX 440 (or
4000) or with around an FX 5700).  This is with 64-bit Linux of
course.  You won't get 3D accelleration from the open source drivers
for nVidia or ATi (on their newer cards).  ATi might work, especially
if you don't care about 3D, but I'd expect you to have more problems. 
Other specs look fine.  You might look at an nForce chipset (3 for
AGP, 4 if you want to look at PCI-Express graphics) for comparison. 
The K8T800 should work fine, though.

> Now for the dumb question:  After I install FC#/64bit when/if I would compile
> a program, would it be compiled to use the full 64bit or would I be running a
> 32bit app on a 64bit system?

By default, gcc compiles a 64-bit binary.  Add -m32 and it will give
you a 32-bit binary.  If you are controlling the build (writing your
own code with your own makefile), you can do whatever you want.  Most
configurations will try to do 64-bit, though sometimes you have to
work at it to get things working (forgetting to look in the right
directories for 64-bit X libraries seems to be a common mistake). 
Hugh gave you many good tips/observations in his email.  And to echo
Pedro, yum works very well for me in the multi-lib environment.

> Thnx for your input.
> 
> - --
> 
> Regards
> Robert

Jonathan