# i386 or amd64?



## tim-m89 (Mar 13, 2009)

I've decided to install freebsd amd64. The xorg nv driver was causing complete system freeze randomly, without a log entry and I cant find any pattern of the cause so I probably cant be much help with that.

My laptop has a switch that I can use to boot up using an intel graphics instead of the nvidia which is how I narrowed the freeze to the nv driver. This intel graphics claims to save a bit of power but it makes my computer go a whole lot slower.

Another option is to use offical nvidia driver but that only works on i386? I kind of want to but cant completely decide if I need to use compiz but the nvidia driver should take the load off the cpu a bit.

I would like to run some kind of a vm app to install other operating systems where I can just test some code in a safe environment. As a software developer I think this should benefit from amd64 alot but have never benchmarked so not sure great a difference (or which will be faster to be honest). Sometime I have came across other software which just doesn't work with i386 and I won't know what software that is until it's too late.

Is it possible to use nvidia driver on amd64?
How easy would it be to have a hybrid installation?


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## trev (Mar 13, 2009)

> Is it possible to use nvidia driver on amd64?



No - nVidia needs additional hooks to be put in the FreeBSD kernel to enable them to produce a 64 bit nv driver. It's been a few years already... and people have given up holding their breath


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## Djn (Mar 13, 2009)

It's slowly but surely getting there, though - there's not much left on the todo list on the kernel side.


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## hydra (Mar 13, 2009)

Depends how much memory you have ? If it's around 3GB, go for i386, because virtually everything works on i386.


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## Mel_Flynn (Mar 13, 2009)

+1 on what hydra said. Remember your pointer size doubles, so double linked lists, btrees and so on get hit 4 times.
As an alternative, consider a small dual-boot amd64, you'll use to debug 64-bit specific problems. As a bonus you can build world with debug symbols, cause you don't use it for production work and have more debugging information available to you.


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## Djn (Mar 13, 2009)

On the flipside, ZFS is apparently better on amd64. (Though you can make it act perfectly fine on x86 with a decent amount of RAM)


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## randux (Mar 15, 2009)

There isn't a good leading VM like VirtualBox or VMWare on any of the Big 3 BSDs. I also need this capability so I'm running Linux and Solaris boxes in addition to my FreeBSD AMD64 desktop (which I sadly don't get much time on anymore).

Just FYI you have to have the hardware virtualization support on a 64 bit processor to run a 64 bit guest, at least under the latest VirtualBox. That's right, not every Core 2 Duo or Quad can run a 64 bit guest! Ask me how I know 

I am running my 7.1-RELEASE desktop on a pretty nice box but it has the onboard G31 chipset. I'm interested to hear your statement on performance, because I also have a performance problem which nobody has been able to diagnose. However, once apps start once they start fast enough the next time. I think it's filesystem related but I can't prove it and I don't have time right now to look further.


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## aragon (Mar 17, 2009)

You could also try the Nouveau driver assuming it is in a working state right now.


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## nickolas (Mar 19, 2009)

If it's a desktop machine, you'll better use i386. 
There are some missing useful ports (such as wine, nvidia native drivers) for amd64.

But on servers you can use amd64 with no problems.


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## Maurovale (Mar 21, 2009)

Hi, my recomendations is:

If you dont need Wine and have an ATI card, then go with Amd64 you will not regret.

If you need wine or have a nvidia card, then your best bet is to wait and be with i386.


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## Oko (Mar 22, 2009)

Maurovale said:
			
		

> Hi, my recomendations is:
> 
> If you dont need Wine and have an ATI card, then go with Amd64 you will not regret.


You sound very confident. Did you know that you are actually penalized in speed on amd if your software is not written for 64 bits. Also some Intel chipsets which are suppose to support full 
amd instruction set are not supporting it due to low quality.
I would like to see you running amd on those chips. 

I am not advocating anything I am just saying that original question is ill posed. i386 vs amd64 for what?
We need full description of hardware and applications which will
be running before saying anything intelligent. 

By the way I do run i386, amd, sparc64 and sgimips but OpenBSD.
I do use amd on my main work station because I have 4GB of RAM 
and Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The only inconvenience
no Linux comp layer so I can not use Opera.


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## Djn (Mar 22, 2009)

If you can produce an example of an intel laptop CPU with EMT64 that won't run FreeBSD/amd64, I'll be mildly surprised.


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## hedwards (Mar 25, 2009)

aragon said:
			
		

> You could also try the Nouveau driver assuming it is in a working state right now.


I've been using it and it's not bad. Overall the things it supports work well, the downside is that they haven't gotten 3d acceleration going yet, but for the basic functions it seems to work well.

I'm going to be switching back to i386 for a while, but overall things do work. Just not wine or a few other niceties.


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