From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1ET0Ln-0004vm-UD for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:06:40 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.5/8.13.5) with SMTP id j9LH3WcH004062; Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:03:32 GMT Received: from rwcrmhc12.comcast.net (rwcrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.198.39]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.5/8.13.5) with ESMTP id j9LGxeib003268 for ; Fri, 21 Oct 2005 16:59:41 GMT Received: from [24.22.104.124] (c-24-22-104-124.hsd1.or.comcast.net[24.22.104.124]) by comcast.net (rwcrmhc13) with ESMTP id <2005102117021601500r91koe>; Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:02:16 +0000 Message-ID: <43591F11.9000300@comcast.net> Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 10:02:09 -0700 From: Rob User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20051015 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] i386 vs amd64 References: <43583153.2070603@comcast.net> <1129899295.31014.3.camel@alain.oneredshoe.net> In-Reply-To: <1129899295.31014.3.camel@alain.oneredshoe.net> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.92.0.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 825e29e3-916a-4782-a4d0-4ae45d3a9802 X-Archives-Hash: f70aae02dcfb3d90c56b83666b107890 Scott Tiret wrote: > On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 20:07 -0400, Sean wrote: > >>I have a dual opteron here and I am thinking of putting Gentoo on it. I >>am trying to decide to go with either the amd64 or i386 version. >>So I am asking some Gentoo amd64 users, are you happy with the version >>or would you have gained more with i386? >>Do most applications work on amd64 or are there some important ones missing? > > > I have been running an x86_64 (amd64) system for a few months now. The > only thing I have been missing is a 64bit version of Macromedia > Shockwave plugin. Apparently, there is no 64bit version for this > proprietary software. > > Everything else is fine. I have all I need on my desktop. x86_64 > version of Openoffice-bin (rc3) takes a long time to open, but is > promising. > > Good luck, > I thought the email might be a good place to ask for some ideas: I don't want to start a 64bit vs 32 bit war, or a Windows versus *nix war, but it has been my experience so far that the fastest benchmarks for a highly computation intensive program written in Numeric Python came on my 3.5Ghz P4 laptop with hyperthreading- on Windows. Also, running the same program on an AMD Opteron gave me a slower speed no matter what OS I was using. I performed the experiments when the Opteron was first introduced. I paid a high price for the fastest chip I could find- I don't remember the exact speed. I haven't tried the test lately though. Maybe it has gotten much better. Do not ask me why it happened, I have no idea. But even now, Windows+P4 has consistently been 3x faster in execution time than any Python on 32 bit *nix systems. The specific program is a Numeric Python port of the NEC2 EM Simulator program which calculates the Norton-Summerfield ground coefficients under an antenna. It makes much use of Complex-64 variables. I ported it from FORTRAN so I could more easily see how the program worked. I am baffled by the behavior. The only thing I can figure might be occuring would be that the *nix 64 bit toolchains are much younger than the 32 bit ones. But as the 32 bit Numeric Python on Windows is still 3x faster than the *nix equivalents, I have asked Activestate, the Windows Python provider, if they do anything special when compiling the code and they say no. I think they said that they use some ordinary MS comiler. Any ideas would help me to put to rest the problem. I say it is a problem as I really don't want to boot into Windows XP to run scientific programs in Numeric Python. Thanks, Rob. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list