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Date:      Mon, 1 Mar 2004 01:07:48 -0800
From:      "David O'Brien" <obrien@freebsd.org>
To:        Henrik W Lund <henrik.w.lund@hiof.no>
Cc:        freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Considering an AMD64 system...
Message-ID:  <20040301090748.GA66432@dragon.nuxi.com>
In-Reply-To: <4040A9FA.50801@hiof.no>
References:  <4040A9FA.50801@hiof.no>

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On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 03:47:22PM +0100, Henrik W Lund wrote:
> Now, since I want to run my favourite OS on the system, I want to know
> if  the amd64 architecture is well supported. I know it says on the
> website that amd64 is a Tier 1 architecture, but from reading this
> list and checking out docs, it seems as if it's just a teensy bit
> unstable.

Precisly what posts and docs give you that impression?  It is VERY
stable.  No panics, no locks, etc... beyond FreeBSD/i386.

> Or is this due to fragility of the hardware (with memory
> lockups, freezing and such)?

Uh, NO.  See above.

> Now, if the amd64 is indeed fully supported, this leads me to another
> question: what hardware is supported? I'm mainly thinking of
> mainboards and their chipsets here, as I reckon most of the regular

Everything.  All amd64 motherboards are supported.

> the amd64 and the i386 platform (if I got the wrong idea here, please
> tell me!). What chipsets would you recommend? I kinda have my eye on
> the nForce chipset, as I understand this is good for multimedia (and
> gaming), but I'm open to suggestions.

nForce3 systems have crappy BIOS's, stay away from them.  (note, the
crappiness isn't any worse than many typical 32-bit x86 BIOS's)  With the
memory controller being in the CPU, there is no benefit to the nVidia
nForce chipset over other chipsets.  In fact, the Via K8T800 chipset is
benchmarking the fastest.

-- 
-- David  (obrien@FreeBSD.org)



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