# FreeBSD/i386 or amd64 for web server



## MarkSThomas (Feb 18, 2014)

Greetings.

I will be setting up a new Dell server in the very near future. I plan on installing FreeBSD 10. The server will be used for Apache/MySQL/PHP. I currently use NetBSD which serves around a million pages a month. My question is; should i use i386 or amd64? Or will it even matter!

Here are the specs.


> PowerEdge T110 II:
> Processor:
> Intel® Xeon® E3-1220v2 3.10 GHz, 8M Cache, Turbo, Quad Core/4T (69W)E31220T
> Memory:
> ...



Thanks
Mark


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## SirDice (Feb 18, 2014)

MarkSThomas said:
			
		

> My question is; should I use i386 or amd64? Or will it even matter!


With 4 GB of memory I don't think it'll matter much, performance wise or other. If the server had _more_ than 4 GB the choice would have been simple, amd64. 

If the server supports more than 4 GB, I'd go with amd64. You may want to add more memory in the future.


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## MarkSThomas (Feb 18, 2014)

SirDice said:
			
		

> If the server supports more than 4 GB, I'd go with amd64. You may want to add more memory in the future.


Thanks! I will give amd64 a try then.


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## SirDice (Feb 18, 2014)

Oh, I couldn't find it on short notice but make sure the Xeons support Intel 64 (EM64T or whatever Intel calls the 64 bit extensions these days). Apparently not all Xeon processors do and that would make running amd64 impossible.


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## MarkSThomas (Feb 18, 2014)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Oh, I couldn't find it on short notice but make sure the Xeons support Intel 64 (EM64T or whatever Intel calls the 64 bit extensions these days). Apparently not all Xeon processors do and that would make running amd64 impossible.


According to Intel it has a 64 bit instruction set. I'm not sure we are referring to the same thing though.  

Thanks for the heads-up, i'm still looking.


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## trh411 (Feb 18, 2014)

MarkSThomas said:
			
		

> SirDice said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I think the terminology is Intel@64, which your chip supports per your previous reference. Scroll down to *Advanced Technologies*.

Edit: Sorry did not know how to do the trademark symbol.


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## trh411 (Feb 18, 2014)

Made this a separate post so you would not miss it.

Just noticed this disclaimer, which I previously missed:

```
‡ This feature may not be available on all computing systems. Please check with the system vendor to determine if your system delivers this feature, or reference the system specifications (motherboard, processor, chipset, power supply, HDD, graphics controller, memory, BIOS, drivers, virtual machine monitor-VMM, platform software, and/or operating system) for feature compatibility. Functionality, performance, and other benefits of this feature may vary depending on system configuration.
```
So only the system vendor can answer this question?


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## ondra_knezour (Feb 18, 2014)

Intel 64 is what has been known as EM64T what has been known as IA-32e what has AMD introduced to the market as AMD64 what has been known as x86-64 during the development 

This machine is definitely 64-bit capable, I am not aware about any recent server HW which is not. Regarding CPU, see the Essentials section on the page linked above, there is stated Instruction set: 64-bit.

In the early days of ZFS on FreeBSD, there was better support on amd64 platform, but I don't know, if this was later changed.

There is only one negligible downside of the 64-bit programs - compilers may produce little bigger binaries, but who cares.

Because most of recent hardware in server business is 64-bit capable with more than 4 GB of RAM I would personally also consider amd64 more deployed and thus tested.


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## MarkSThomas (Feb 18, 2014)

trh411 said:
			
		

> Made this a separate post so you would not miss it.


Thank you.


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## neel (Feb 18, 2014)

Considering that your hardware is pretty recent, I'd take amd64 over i386.


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## kpa (Feb 18, 2014)

Even if you have only 2GBs of memory the amd64 version is preferred over i386 because of much less complicated memory management in the kernel. On i386 the 32-bit address space limitation can cause some severe problems over longer periods of uptime that are not present in amd64 version of FreeBSD.


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## Oko (Feb 19, 2014)

kpa said:
			
		

> Even if you have only 2GBs of memory the amd64 version is preferred over i386 because of much less complicated memory management in the kernel. On i386 the 32-bit address space limitation can cause some severe problems over longer periods of uptime that are not present in amd64 version of FreeBSD.


Could you please be more specific about memory management? Reference to papers would be OK too.

Thanks,
Oko


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## MarkSThomas (Oct 1, 2014)

Just a follow up ... everything is running smoothly. Installed amd64. I'm using portmaster to keep things up to date. 

Thanks again!


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