# Which FreeBSD do I install (Centrino 2, Intel 64-bit) ?



## devildog (Aug 25, 2009)

Hello,

Which FreeBSD do I install for a laptop with a Centrino 2 (dual-core, Intel 64-bit) CPU?

I know its not the IA64 cause thats for for Titanium,

I know i386 would work, but its 32-bit.

What about AMD64?  My first thought was that it was AMD only, but after googling found a reference that it works for Intel-X86-64 but was still called "AMD64" for historical reasons?  (Don't know if that is right.)

Confused...


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## Voltar (Aug 25, 2009)

You would want the amd64 release, it's for both Intel EMT64 CPUs and AMD's CPUs. 

However you may be better off with i386 if you want nVidia driver support, or if you don't have a lot of RAM.


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## tessio (Aug 25, 2009)

AMD64 works for all PC's 64bit processors. In Linux it's called x86-64..


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## tangram (Aug 25, 2009)

devildog said:
			
		

> Confused...



Don't be 

You can use either i386 (32 bits) or amd64 (64 bits) ISO images. 

Just for reference, from Wikipedia: _"FreeBSD first added x86-64 support under the name "amd64" as an experimental architecture in 5.1-RELEASE in June 2003."_

Bear in mind that amd64 is bound to some limitations, such as there being no NVIDIA binary drivers for 64 bits (though work is underway).


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## devildog (Aug 25, 2009)

Thanks.. 

I have 6GB of RAM and the video hardware in the laptop is an ATI Radeon 4650 (1GB discrete).

Should I still go with AMD64?


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## tangram (Aug 25, 2009)

Go for it.


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## devildog (Aug 25, 2009)

Sounds good... Thanks... Downloading it now..

Yeah, I'm coming from Linux...


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## tessio (Aug 25, 2009)

An i386 kernel with PAE enabled would support until 64GB of RAM.


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## devildog (Aug 25, 2009)

Oh.  Quick google shows that 4GB will be the max for AMD64?

Would it make that much difference anyway?  I mean, I'm going to be the only user... ?


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## Voltar (Aug 25, 2009)

devildog said:
			
		

> Oh.  Quick google shows that 4GB will be the max for AMD64?
> 
> Would it make that much difference anyway?  I mean, I'm going to be the only user... ?



No, i386 without PAE has a max of 4GB. The limits for 64 bit OSs are a lot higher, to the point I can't even think of it off the top of my head.


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## phoenix (Aug 25, 2009)

devildog said:
			
		

> Thanks..
> 
> I have 6GB of RAM and the video hardware in the laptop is an ATI Radeon 4650 (1GB discrete).
> 
> Should I still go with AMD64?



If you have more than 4 GB of RAM, you need to use the 64-bit version of FreeBSD.  The 32-bit version can only access 4 GB of RAM.

(There are hacks like PAE to access more than 4 GB of RAM with the 32-bit version, but they aren't always reliable.  Better to use a 64-bit OS.)


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