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

[Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com>]

> > 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

That's what I just bought.  A Sempron64 3000+.  So, if there isn't an
amd64 package available, I can always use x86?  Does portage make it
easy to do this?

- Grant
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