Athlon 64-bit vs Athlon 32-bit

kpachopoulos · 10-08-2004, 05:40 AM

I'm thinking of upgrading my PC and buying an AMD64 2800. However i'm thinking if it would be better to buy 2 Athlon 32-bit CPUs of lower speed, for ex. 2000. What would better, especially for Linux (FreeBSD maybe)? I think, that a major advantage would be faster RAM access.
I've read that in AMD64 the number of registers has been doubled. Considering that the length of registers is the same, does that mean that an application will run in an AMD64 twice as fast as in an 32 (bit Athlon-having placed them in the same PC)?

Mara · 10-08-2004, 02:28 PM

No. It won't. Two 32-bit processors may be a better idea, but I'm not sure (search for benchmarks). RAM access time has noting to do with register length. The application must be written correctly to get more by using 64-bit processor (long registers are good, so you can get longer value from memory to keep it in a register and do something with it).

jschiwal · 10-11-2004, 06:15 PM

SuSE 9.1 and Mandrake 10.1 Beta 1 are two distros for the AMD64. The programs installed have been built for X86_64.

If you purchased SuSE 9.1 Professional, on Side B of the DVD installation disk is the AMD64 version.

Since the Intel chip which will come out in the future will be based on the AMD64 design this chip architecture will probably become the most common in the future.

If you decide to go the dual 32-bit processor route, you will need to install a MP kernel.

nuka_t · 10-11-2004, 06:18 PM

not to mentions gentoo...