Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:55:44 +0100 (CET) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, kkutzko@teksavvy.com Subject: Re: Dual Core Xeon / i386 install w/ more than 4gb of RAM Message-ID: <200802201555.m1KFtiiU094042@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <002e01c87344$371766b0$a5463410$@com>
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Kevin K <kkutzko@teksavvy.com> wrote: > I have a box that we recently installed 16GB of RAM on. The box is i386 > FreeBSD 6.2. It only recognizes 4gb. Several people have already pointed out that you can either run FreeBSD/i386+PAE or FreeBSD/amd64 (64bit). However, there's an important piece of information missing: _Why_ did you install 16 GB of RAM? The answer to that question might give an indication which of the two ways would be best for you. For example, if you need to run a single large application that needs much RAM, then i386+PAE won't help you at all, because you still have a 4 GB address space limit and a 4 GB process size limit. Actually much less than 4 GB because the 32bit address space is shared between kernel and userland. To get rid of the 4 GB limit completely, you must install FreeBSD/amd64. Also, amd64 code is often (but not always) faster than i386 code. My recommendation is that you use amd64, unless there is a specific reason you can't do that, e.g. you depend on a driver or third-party software that won't run on amd64. Then i386+PAE is your only choice, unfortunately. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd "The ITU has offered the IETF formal alignment with its corresponding technology, Penguins, but that won't fly." -- RFC 2549
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