Re: [gentoo-user] 64-bit system?

[Pawel Kraszewski <Gentoo@kraszewscy.net>]

Dnia poniedziałek, 18 września 2006 17:49, Richard Fish napisał:

> You'll only notice a speed increase with applications that need to
> caculate very large numbers, like encryption keys and certain
> scientific apps.  Everything else will basically run just as fast in
> 32-bit mode as it will in 64-bit.  There are exceptions in certain
> media encoders that don't have hardware optimizations for 64-bit, that
> may actually run faster as 32-bit apps.

Well, the registers are not only twice longer, but there is twice as much of 
them as in 32-bit. And THIS is what optimising compilers are fond of. More 
registers mean less in-memory temporary variables, which in turn means less 
memory accesses. This gives speed improvement. For SMP systems it gives huge 
difference - as the memory is shared between CPUs and they must fight for it.

I have an amd64 system for over a year (or is it 2-yrs?). I had some glitches:

* Need to use binary 32-bit firefox to have flash - still have problems with 
  some fonts not appearing in flash
* Need to use 32-bit java to make 32-bit OpenOffice happy
* Some forensic packages won't compile on 64-bit due to bad coding techniques

But besides that - my AMD64 3000+ just rocks. I had definitely much more 
problems with 64-bit XP, but since getting rid of it (XP not problems) I am 
fully 64-bit positive :D

-- 
 Pawel Kraszewski
 www.kraszewscy.net

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