Is 64 bit Fedora OK? With which CPU?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Cristian Sava <smc_ro at yahoo.com>

| I have some new boxes in front of me:
| - Dual Intel Xeon 3600 EM64T, 8GB
| - Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB, Asus A8N-E, 200GB Sata 2
| - Athlon 64 3200+, 512MB, 120GB Sata
| I use FC4 x86_64 & Windows x64 on Athlon 64 and FC4
| i386 on Xeon.
| Dual Xeon 3600 is 2.8 faster than Dual Intel PIII 1.13
| Ghz & 1GB with a Postgresql database.
| Athlon 64 works much better with Windows x64 than FC4
| x86_64.

In what way?

I have no big problems with FC4 x86_64.

There are so few native applications for "Windows XP Professional x64
Edition" that I'm surprised that you find it useful.  What are you
using it for?

| Just my feeling: Athlon 64 or Opteron are much, much
| better than Intel EM64T on 64 bit SO.

What is SO?

In what way are AMD products so much better?

I know that Intel is missing the 64-bit I/O stuff; this could have
performance impacts for database applications and the like.

The Intel CPUs are currently greater power hogs (but so were older AMD
chips).

Intel multi-core chips have more of a memory bus bottleneck.

Intel chips take more cycles to get a task done, but the clock is
faster, so most tasks are done in roughly the same time.  The final
tuning variable is price -- rather carefully set by the manufacturer.

All in all, I think that the differences are modest.  I don't see a
reason to say that AMD chips are "much, much better".  (The only
x86_64 systems that I've bought have had AMD chips, so I did think that
AMD chips were somewhat better.)