On Tue, Aug 11, 2020, at 11:41 AM, Remco Rijnders wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 07:46:36PM -0400, Jack wrote in
> <46fdde47-4437-5aa4-926d-e42aaed8e...@users.sourceforge.net>:
> >>On Mon, Aug 10, 2020, at 1:19 PM, Никита Степанов wrote:
> >>>What is faster: amd64 or x86?
> >
> >Nikita, what are you really asking about? Or, are you just looking to
> >stir the pot?
>
> I think the intended or underlying question was: Should I use the x86
> or amd64 boot media to install Gentoo on my system?
>
> And I think the appropiate answer almost always is amd64 if the system
> supports it. I can see exceptions on severely memory constrained
> systems or if you need to mainly run software that can only run in 32
> bit, but both seem rather uncommon to me.
>
The appropriate answer is always amd64. The last I looked at benchmarks
was quite a long time ago, but I think there is improvement to running
32 bit programs inside a 64 bit OS. The newer chips are more than just a
new instruction set. They contain a lot of machinery to make boring things,
like context switching, faster.
