Hey there As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I switched from 32 to 64 bit after some convinction work done by the ML and a friend. In order to justify the switch for myself, I made some performance comparisons. So, in case anyone is interested, here are my results. The only thing I don't really like is of course the increased RAM usage. While the old installation took 400 MB of RAM after Login to KDE (Akonadi is a hog), it now takes 500. The memory meter now stands always at least at 50% (3 GB available). I will have to tune down multitasking a bit. The following items first display the command excuted (denoted by $), and then the output of time for the command; first for 32 bit and then 64 bit. All tests were done on my Core 2 Duo laptop (T7200, max. 2GHz) fixed at 1 GHz and with 3 GB of RAM. This is not a theoretical benchmark, but rather about stuff I usually to do in my every-day computing. I excluded compiling, because it involves more than just crunching. Resulting observation: there seems to be an inherent increase of about 10% in memory throughput. I was most surprised by the performance of lilypond and blender, two computing-intensive applications I tend to use regularly. I wanted to do a framerate comparison of the Java-based CPU hog Minecraft, but didn't get around to it. All the following tasks were done in ramdisk to rule out HDD hindrance. $ 7z b (7zip's own benchmark function, abridged output) 32 bit | 64 bit =========================================================================== RAM size: 3037 MB | RAM size: 3013 MB RAM usage: 425 MB | RAM usage: 425 MB | Dict Compressing | Decomp. | Dict Compressing | Decomp. Speed Rating | Speed Rating | Speed Rating | Speed Rating KB/s MIPS | KB/s MIPS | KB/s MIPS | KB/s MIPS | 22: 1487 1446 | 19039 1719 | 22: 1612 1568 | 20974 1893 23: 1443 1470 | 19049 1744 | 23: 1612 1642 | 20758 1900 24: 1499 1612 | 18854 1749 | 24: 1591 1711 | 20292 1883 25: 1489 1700 | 18611 1750 | 25: 1584 1809 | 20030 1884 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Avr: 1557 1740 | 1682 1890 Tot: 1649 | 1786 Various compressions of the High Voltage SID collection version 56 (41356 files, 1416 folders, total dir size 307.676k according to du -s). Extract: $ unrar x hvsc.rar real 0m38.582s 0m38.763s user 0m36.031s 0m36.190s sys 0m2.523s 0m2.496s ---> neglibible Repack witz p7zip, resulting archive size 54.8 MB: $ 7za a -t7z -m0=lzma -mx=9 -mfb=64 -md=32m -ms=on hvsc.7z C64Music/ > /dev/null real 3m0.530s 2m41.780s user 5m22.359s 4m55.810s sys 2m2.973s 0m3.144s ---> 1/9 faster Extract from 7z: $ 7z x hvsc.7z real 0m24.541s 0m21.437s user 0m19.302s 0m16.929s sys 0m4.403s 0m4.472s ---> 1/10 faster Simple taring of the directory: $ tar cf hvsc.tar C64Music/ real 0m1.334s 0m1.226s user 0m0.297s 0m0.304s sys 0m1.020s 0m0.872s ---> ~1/10 faster XZing the tar, resulting archive size 54.2 MB: $ xz -k -z hvsc.tar real 6m26.383s 4m31.747s user 6m23.375s 4m30.969s sys 0m2.733s 0m0.728s ---> ~1/3 faster XZing with --extreme option (about 4% smaller archive): $ xz -e -k -z hvsc.tar real 15m37.732s 10m39.348s user 15m36.592s 10m38.900s sys 0m0.977s 0m0.456s ---> ~1/3 faster Packing in squashfs: $ mksquashfs C64Music/ hvsc.sqfs real 0m57.380s 0m44.697s user 1m45.136s 1m20.377s sys 0m9.059s 0m6.116s ---> ~1/4 faster Some memory shuffling: $ dd if=/dev/urandom of=random bs=1M count=500 real 2m0.306s 1m49.348s user 0m0.003s 0m0.000s sys 2m0.292s 1m49.315s ---> 1/12 faster $ cp random r2 real 0m1.069s 0m0.917s user 0m0.000s 0m0.004s sys 0m1.067s 0m0.908s ---> 1/10 faster Compile Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Tenor part, 16 pages A5: $ lilypond wo.ly real 0m31.430s 0m23.737s user 0m30.711s 0m23.129s sys 0m0.717s 0m0.592s ---> 1/3 faster Compile Oratorio de Noël by Saint-Saëns, 4 voices, 16 pages A4: $ lilypond noel.lyk real 0m41.575s 0m26.494s user 0m41.177s 0m25.870s sys 0m0.390s 0m0.604s ---> >1/3 faster Optimising a PNG (photo of Orion nebula, 1400x1050 pixel): $ optipng -o9 Orion.png real 0m23.491s 0m21.337s user 0m23.465s 0m21.281s sys 0m0.027s 0m0.008s ---> 1/10 faster Encoding a video file to x264 (1280x960, 1600 frames, no sound): First pass: $ mencoder bike.flv -ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=2000:pass=1 -nosound -o /dev/null real 1m57.379s 1m44.500s user 3m48.048s 3m19.728s sys 0m0.837s 0m0.796s ---> 1/8 faster Second pass: $ mencoder bike.flv -ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=2000:pass=2 -nosound -o bike.avi real 4m53.233s 4m15.533s user 9m41.169s 8m26.660s sys 0m0.990s 0m1.144s ---> 1/8 faster Rendering a small test scene in Blender 2.63 (http://www.eofw.org/bench/test.blend): (file's scene defaults: 800x600, one thread) win32 2:59 Gentoo32 2:57 Gentoo64 2:09 ---> > 1/3 faster -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla' Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service. “Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.” – Linus Torvalds