Hi, On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 04:18:21PM +0200, Ira Abramov wrote: > Howdie people... > > Three months ago I changed my dual-P2/350 to an Athlon K7/900. > apperently this was a bad move since I can see absolutely no improvement > in speed (probably since I cut the L2 cache in half).
That's weird. I have a feeling I read exactly this expectation from you some time ago (a quick google search ... Aha: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00416.html> Although I must say "no improvement" is a bit weird. Do you mean "in general, day-to-day, non-timed work", or in specific CPU-intensive things you do? > > In other words, contrary to common sense I decided to buy the > latest-greatest. this means either K8 or P4. K8 looking cheaper at the > moment, and possibly much faster with 64 bit kernel, so far am I right? This subject was already mentioned here, with no conclusions. A few articles I read show no clear cut. Some things are faster with the K8, some things with the P4. As I said then, we recently got a dual Opteron 1.6Ghz, with 8GB RAM. It wasn't bought for its great speed, but for someone who needed more than 4GB RAM in a single process (and since now it's possible, without buying an expensive RISC machine). That said, it does feel quite fast, and some things run on it as fast as on a 3Ghz P4. But we did not really benchmark it. > > Then come the following questions... can I take a 32-bit system (Debian > Sid) into the 64bit world on a smooth path, such as installing a new > kernel and changing a few APT parameters, or do I need a complete > reinstall of some sort? No need for a complete reinstall in any case. As far as I can tell, Debian have not yet made up their minds about whether they will have only one version (x86 based, with a few x86_64 packages), or a few (one of them being completely 64 bit). > > Is Debian's 64 bit port good enough or will I be better off changing > distros? I'm not very keen on that... > > any idea or advice will be welcome. Most of the machines here boot from the network. Currently into RH73, and we are in the middle of moving to Sarge. To make the new machine run well, after googling a bit and deciding I see no reason to install something else on it, I downloaded Knoppix64, and have stolen from it a few things, put them into the RH73 root, and it works well. The things I copied are the kernel, all of /lib64 and /usr/lib64, as well as their gcc (which I put in /usr/local/lib/gcc34064), and one main change I was pretty scared with, but which works well - I made insmod/modprobe/etc a script that runs the needed version based on `arch`. My suggestion: Either look at Debian and decide for yourself that they are better than what I said - that is, that their 64bit additions are ready, or simply do what I did. You won't need to make *mod* scripts, because you do not intend to share this with a 32bit machine. When, in a few months (hopefully) Debian gets ready, you'll simply delete all of /lib64 and /usr/lib64, and upgrade. Just make sure that in the meantime you do not install any critical software as 64bit, or you'll make the transition harder. You do not have to do all of this now, BTW. Contrary to Itanium, K8 runs 32bit code very fast. I am not even sure that "normal" (with normal being quite hard to define) apps will run faster as 64bit. As was shown in some article, some will surely run *slower*. In short, the main use is if you need more than 4GB RAM. Otherwise simply use 32bit versions and wait for things to mature. Good luck, and tell us about your experience, -- Didi ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
