Time for a system upgrade... Couple of ?s...
 

Well, my old AMD Athlon XP 1800+ is showing signs of age... So its time to take the next step into + 3Ghz territory... I have 2 basic system ideas in mind, but I need more info/input on the subject before I purchase one or the other...

I either want an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ or the Pentium 4 640 3.2Ghz 64 bit version (EM64T)...
I also want to go ahead and upgrade to PCI-E...

My questions are, does the Linux kernel support 64 bit yet? I know Ive seen something on it somewhere... What about Hyper Threading? I do alot of multitasking and I think I could benefit from it, if the kernel supports it... What about PCI Express and a PCI-E card?

I also have a question on the software side of the upgrade, I currently run Slackware 10.1 and have it all setup the way I want it... Would I have to reinstall everything? I know Id have to install the drivers, and probably recompile the kernel (which I know how to do), but would all my other software work with the new hardware without a recompile?

And in general, what do you think about the P4 vs the AMD... Ive looked and theres just so much data to sift thru... Basically Ive come up with the fact that thge P4 with HT systems are great for multitasking and those kinds of benchmarks, and the AMD is best in the gaming benchmarks... Any real world experiences? Which would be best for Linux in the end? That is what I intend to run mostly anyways, with a small (if thats possible) WIndows XP install for games...

Sorry for all the questions, just dont want to jump into this without doing my research and asking questions...

Thanks in advance...

Hi Exempt,
Hopefully I can answer at least a few of these questions.
The linux kernel IS 64 bit compatible (at least for AMD 64...I've never attempted a pentium 64), and runs quite amazingly on 64 bit processors due to being able to be compiled for the processor specifically. It would require a recompile of the kernel and all drivers. As for the software, the software would not necessarily need to be recompiled but you would not receive as many added benefits without recompiling...it would be much better (or faster performance wise I should say) to recompile the software or get a 64 bit distribution...but most of the software should work fine. You would definitely want to update key packages such as gcc, and you would get a performance boost from getting a new kde/gnome/X package

As for hyperthreading, there is a kernel support for hyperthreading...but since you will be running 64 bits, I do not think the performance would be a huge increase, though I may be wrong...I haven't seen or run benchmarks regarding 64 bit hyperthreading vs amd 64

I personally like AMD better, but that's personal preferance. I have had less problems with AMD's, and they tend to do better on floating point calculations while Intel seems to do better on integer calculations...as you said, gaming vs normal computing though it typically requires a true benchmark to see the difference...the difference is rarely visibly noticeable. I have ran an AMD 64 on a Gentoo installation and different between it and a 32 bit is amazing enough for me.

Since Windows does not have a true native 64 bit compilation yet, I doubt it would matter which processor you go with for Windows...though AMD does seem to be less troublesome for gaming.

I know I didn't help much, but hopefully it's a little help

Actually you helped alot... Thank you for your reply!

You answered my main worries about the 64 bit architecture and Linux... I was also concerned whether or not a noticable gain would be there... And since the Kernel supports it, and from your experiences, I can imagine that it would increase overall system performance drastically...

And you seem to be one of many who prefer AMD... I have always gone with AMD, and havnt been dissapointed, but this time I figured Id give Intel a try, but I think that I may go with AMD once again... It seems to make pretty good benchmarks compared to the Intel...

64-bit Slackware
 

Hello Exempt!

I'd just like to echo some of what Finder said and give you a couple links that I hope you might find helpful.

As far as the AMD vs. Intel debate, I guess that's mostly personal preference, but everyone that I know who's used Linux with either chip manufacturer has had roughly the same experiences. Like Finder, I prefer AMD, but again that's completely up to you!

You said you're running Slackware 10.1 and would like to keep your setup intact if at all possible. I'm not sure if you've run across this distribution yet, but there's one called Slamd64 that is essentially a port of Slackware 10.1 to x86_64 bit architecture. It's not officially sanctioned by Patrick Volkerding, but the fellow that runs it has seemed to keep the distro fairly close to its roots, just recompiling everything for 64 bit. LWN did a review on it on July 27, 2005. Might be worth a look.

One idea that you might want to try is to just back up your current configuration files from your Slack 10.1 install and transfer them to the Slamd64 install, then tweak as necessary. Another method might be to use your current kernel configuration (just change the architecture to x86_64 and recompile) as well as your current Slack installation and then use pkgtool to upgrade all the 32-bit packages to 64-bit ones. I'm not sure if Slamd64 uses the same package-naming technique or not as Pat's Slackware, but if it does, that seems like it'd be a fairly painless way to update the whole system to be 64-bit compliant without reinstalling (though I admit that I've never done it -- might cause things to explode :eek: )

Anyway, just thought that I'd put in my two cents. Not sure if it'll be useful or not, but I hope it helps! Good luck with the upgrade!

No, I didnt know about Slamd64... I will definately look into it... Thanks!

If you do a lot of multitasking, then an AMD Athlon 64 X2 will work better for you. Pentium 4 with hyperthreading enabled gets worst as you keep loading programs because the memory bandwidth is not big enough. EM64T is just 64-bit extensions that converts to 32-bit. AMD's X2 processors scale very well when you load several programs at the same time. AMD is planning to increase the memory bus speed to 500 MHz even though they really do not need it. AMD Athlon 64 X2 produces less heat than any Intel Pentium 4.

Well, linux has been supporting 64-bit far before windows

Great, thanks for the info guys! Id love to get the X2, but its a bit out of my price range right now tho...