# Which version of FreeBSD is the right one for me?



## Lasse (Sep 15, 2010)

I am using an Intel Core2 Quad CPU. Should I choose i386 or amd64?

Thanks in advance/
Lasse.


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## graudeejs (Sep 15, 2010)

How much ram?
if up to 3GB, then I'd use i386, otherwise amd64


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## SirDice (Sep 15, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> How much ram?
> if up to 3GB, then I'd use i386, otherwise amd64



Agreed. If you have 3GB or less, stick to i386.


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## gkontos (Sep 15, 2010)

No offense but it is 2010 
I never use i386 platform anymore, regardless of memory 

George


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## UNIXgod (Sep 16, 2010)

gkontos said:
			
		

> No offense but it is 2010
> I never use i386 platform anymore, regardless of memory
> 
> George



agreed. Unless there is a proper upgrade process from i386 to amd64 it may make more sense to view it based on if the cpu is capable.


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## wblock@ (Sep 16, 2010)

If you want to use the system as a desktop, with Flash or Wine or other 32-bit stuff, i386 is easier.


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## davidgurvich (Sep 16, 2010)

I suggest that even if you want to use as a desktop to use amd64.  You will learn so much more about setting up separate compat environments.


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## Galactic_Dominator (Sep 16, 2010)

wblock said:
			
		

> If you want to use the system as a desktop, with Flash or Wine or other 32-bit stuff, i386 is easier.



The normal flash linux plugin uses the same install procedure for both 32 and 64 bit versions.  Wine I suppose is easier on amd64, although I don't have experience there either way.

I use amd64 whenever I'm dealing with a system that is at or around 4GB of RAM, or the system may be upgraded to that in the relatively near future.


> No offense but it is 2010
> I never use i386 platform anymore, regardless of memory


Quite frankly blindly advocating for a 64-bit OS is bad advice.  There are negatives to adopting a 64-bit platform, namely the increased memory usage of applications.  The pro's and con's should be weighed, and amd64 generally only becomes an attractive solution when there is a problem i386 can't solve.  Like addressing 4GB+ RAM.


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## gkontos (Sep 16, 2010)

Galactic_Dominator said:
			
		

> Quite frankly blindly advocating for a 64-bit OS is bad advice.  There are negatives to adopting a 64-bit platform, namely the increased memory usage of applications.  The pro's and con's should be weighed, and amd64 generally only becomes an attractive solution when there is a problem i386 can't solve.  Like addressing 4GB+ RAM.


Maybe true to some extend. Like some VPS hosting solutions where ram is limited and your host is virtual. But in most bare metal I have seen better performance when using 64-bit. Even in 2G ram systems.

Regards,

George


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## SirDice (Sep 16, 2010)

There's a very simple reason for sticking to i386, not all ports support amd64 while all ports support i386. So for a "newbie" I would definitely recommend i386. It will give a new user the least amount of headaches.


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## ronnylov (Sep 16, 2010)

If you are using ZFS filesystem I think amd64 is a better choice even if you have less memory than 3 GB. You might also want to upgrade with more memory in future.


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## wblock@ (Sep 16, 2010)

Just wanted to add: you can run i386 on a system with 4G or more of RAM, it just won't (can't) use more than about 3.5G.


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## gkontos (Sep 16, 2010)

SirDice said:
			
		

> There's a very simple reason for sticking to i386, not all ports support amd64 while all ports support i386. So for a "newbie" I would definitely recommend i386. It will give a new user the least amount of headaches.


I would go the opposite way for a newbie. After all in a few years i386 will be considered legacy.


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## wblock@ (Sep 16, 2010)

gkontos said:
			
		

> I would go the opposite way for a newbie. After all in a few years i386 will be considered legacy.



In a few years, what *won't* be considered legacy? 

But again, it depends on what the machine is going to do.  Server?  amd64 should be fine.  Desktop?  Well, right now there are 278 i386-only ports, and using some commonly-desired stuff on amd64 is difficult, involving decidedly non-beginner things like 32-bit jails.


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## Yampress (Sep 16, 2010)

i386


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## ahavatar (Sep 17, 2010)

Go for amd64. My FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE amd64 desktop running Gnome 2.30, Firefox 3.6 uses about 300MB memory. I can't see any advantage of i386 unless you have some compatibility issues.


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## graudeejs (Sep 17, 2010)

ahavatar said:
			
		

> Go for amd64. My FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE amd64 desktop running Gnome 2.30, Firefox 3.6 uses about 300MB memory. I can't see any advantage of i386 unless you have some compatibility issues.



I can say the opposite about amd64, if you have 3GB ram


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## Seeker (Sep 18, 2010)

Using amd64 with Intel processors?!
Duh!

I was thinking that amd64 sources were exclusively for AMD processors and not any other processors.

I have T8300


FreeBSD/amd64 runs in 64-bit multiuser mode, in both Uniprocessor and Multiprocessor mode.
FreeBSD/amd64 Project --> port to AMD's AMD64 and IntelÂ® 64 architecture.
The AMD Opteronâ„¢, AMD Athlonâ„¢ 64, AMD Turionâ„¢ 64 and newer AMD Sempronâ„¢ processors *use the AMD64 architecture.
*
The Intel vProâ„¢, Intel Celeron D (some models since ``Prescott''), Intel CentrinoÂ® Duo, Intel CentrinoÂ® Pro, Intel Viivâ„¢, Intel Coreâ„¢2 Extreme, Intel Coreâ„¢2 Quad, Intel Coreâ„¢2 Duo, Intel Xeon (3000-sequence, 5000-sequence, and 7000-sequence) processors *use the IntelÂ®64 architecture.*

I also have a 4 GB of RAM, so I guess I should download amd64 sources and fire up!
Right?


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## Beastie (Sep 18, 2010)

Seeker said:
			
		

> I was thinking that amd64 sources were exclusively for AMD processors and not any other processors.


It is for all 64-bit instruction set architectures, but the Itanium.



			
				Seeker said:
			
		

> I also have a 4 GB of RAM, so I guess I should download amd64 sources and fire up!Right?


If you want to use these 4GB, yes.


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## Seeker (Sep 18, 2010)

Duh, there are *no* amd64 sources, but *sources*.
I'll just have to TARGET=amd64 and voila!


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## fronclynne (Sep 19, 2010)

*I still get a little misty-eyed over the death of Alpha.*



			
				Beastie said:
			
		

> It is for all 64-bit instruction set architectures, but the Itanium.



Not to nit-pick, but you're leaving out all of the actual _good_ 64-bit stuff.  And FreeBSD even runs (or ran) on two of those architectures.


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## pkubaj (Sep 19, 2010)

I've been using amd64 ever since I first tried FreeBSD (not so long ago, when 8.0-RELEASE was released). I had only one problem that was architecture-specific. I installed FreeBSD right after releasing 8.0 and there were no drivers for NVIDIA GPUs on amd64. But they appeared a few days later. Other than that, everything's great. No problem with Flash. The procedure to get it running is the same on i386. I definitely recommend amd64.


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## Yampress (Sep 19, 2010)

when I installed   system 64 on my athlon 64 X2 3800+  gnome worked very slow. I dont know it's was problem metacity...

Now I used only i386 on my desktops


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## fronclynne (Sep 19, 2010)

Yampress said:
			
		

> when I installed   system 64 on my athlon 64 X2 3800+  gnome worked very slow. I dont know it's was problem metacity...
> 
> Now I used only i386 on my desktops



I sadly have to agree (in a limited sense at least).  Pretty much everything under X feels (I know it's subjective, so sue me) faster under i386: opera, firefox, freeciv, openoffice.  And this is comparing a 1gHz pentium-M with a 2gHz turion-x2. I still run amd64 when possible, though.


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