Mark Knecht wrote:
So, to check how this hardware platform works in a 32-bit mode I
guess I need to do a complete second install on a separate part of the
hard drive as an Athlon. That's a big job that I'm not anxious to do.
Cheers,
Mark
If you're just trying to compare the performance of your software
between 32-bit and 64-bit kernels, you might try a distro that installs
more quickly. If I recall, you can install a complete 32-bit Debian
system in about half an hour using a Knoppix CD. Google `knoppix
"install to hard disk"` for the howto. I believe you can also get a
64-bit Debian system just as quickly for comparison by following the
same procedure but using a Kanotix-64 CD instead. (You might just
compare against your existing 64-bit Gentoo system instead, but I don't
know how fair a fight would be between a hand-tuned Gentoo system and
one running a binary distro.)
The only hitch I can think of is that some of your applications might
not be available as Debian binaries in both 32 and 64-bit versions.
Also, naturally, you won't have the ability to test your software with
the optimizations afforded by the USE flags you intend to use back here
in Gentoo-land. If you would be building your software from source
anyway, then this would not be an issue.
That being said, I think this experiment would actually be pretty
academic for most users. Unless your software is, say, a very CPU
intensive scientific or multimedia application that was expertly ported
to 64-bit, it is my understanding that you're probably not going to see
a performance difference worth writing home about. I would encourage
anyone to comment if they know better as I would be delighted to learn
it was otherwise.
- Matt
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