x86-64 box

[Andrew Hammond]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


Ken O. Burtch wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 22:40, William Park wrote:
> 
>>On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 02:40:23PM +0800, JM wrote:
>>
>>>hi,
>>>
>>>	we will be buying a 64-bit box, i was wondering if i need to
>>>	recompile my kernel for this?
>>
>>Answer is "No".  Speaking from i386 vs. i686 experience, I barely
>>noticed the difference.  Screen updates were faster, but not by that
>>much.
> 
> I don't know if this has been mentioned, but you'd probably get a bigger
> performance boost by using a SMP kernel rather than recompiling a
> non-SMP kernel for AMD. 

You are aware that SMP is simply a kernel configuration option, right?
Usually, to get performance you turn off SMP on single processor boxes.
It reduces some of the kernel's overhead.

> SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) will take
> advantage of hyperthreaded processors and you should always install an
> SMP kernel on a modern computer.

AMD chips don't have hyperthreading. It's an Intel only thing. The
advantage, if any, is debatable. AMD does support dual core chips (two
CPUs on the same chip), and unlike the Intel's dual core chips, they
don't suck. But they're kinda pricy.

- --
Andrew Hammond    416-673-4138    ahammond-swQf4SbcV9C7WVzo/KQ3Mw at public.gmane.org
Database Administrator, Afilias Canada Corp.
CB83 2838 4B67 D40F D086 3568 81FC E7E5 27AF 4A9A
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFCqccygfzn5SevSpoRAl19AKDBL1ElDHOWvF0Zv1uIjcJ60oaVKQCgg4Yu
lwV5IYnaT+MnXZPuLg7yC+o=
=Xx+u
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml