From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 17 10:57:32 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A031F16A41F; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:57:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: from elvis.mu.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D6D313C48C; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:57:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: from obsecurity.dyndns.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by elvis.mu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EC6E1A3C1A; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:56:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rot13.obsecurity.org (rot13.obsecurity.org [192.168.1.5]) by obsecurity.dyndns.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AF051513E1; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 06:57:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: by rot13.obsecurity.org (Postfix, from userid 1001) id B299BC283; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 06:57:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 06:57:29 -0400 From: Kris Kennaway To: Indigo 23 , freebsd-ports@freebsd.org, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20070617105729.GA41789@rot13.obsecurity.org> References: <6f50eac40706161521r2b524263la2385138f67e10bc@mail.gmail.com> <20070617100401.GA48338@slackbox.xs4all.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070617100401.GA48338@slackbox.xs4all.nl> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Cc: Subject: Re: Upgrading to amd64 requires recompilation of ports? X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:57:32 -0000 On Sun, Jun 17, 2007 at 12:04:01PM +0200, Roland Smith wrote: > On Sat, Jun 16, 2007 at 06:21:40PM -0400, Indigo 23 wrote: > > Does anyone think that its worth the hassle? If you do manage to get > > it up and running, will you see any noticeable advantages or is it > > better to just stick with i386? The only caveat that I can see is a > > recompilation of all the ports. Any thoughts? > > You don't really _need_ it unless you've got more than four gigs of RAM > and are routinely running out of memory on i386. Then again, I installed > amd64 instead of i386 because I could. :-) No regrets so far. s/'ve got more than four gigs of RAM and//. Regardless of amount of RAM, lack of virtual address space on i386 is crippling for certain uses, for example ZFS. > Some stuff like binary drivers, flash player, is not available on > amd64 (not necessarily a bad thing :-). I think i386 has more ports > available as packages. > > Amd 64 will use some more disk space and RAM. Certain CPU-intensive applications will be faster when compiled for amd64 (because of e.g. more registers being available). Other applications may be slower because of increased time required to copy 64-bit pointers compared to 32-bit. There are other architectural differences (e.g. 4 levels of page tables) that may also cause different performance characteristics, plus and minus. It all depends on your workload, so you have to test it and see. Kris