# Which one is better FreeBSD AMD 64 or i386



## mfaridi (Feb 3, 2009)

I want have new installation of FreeBSD 7.1
which one is better and why?
FreeBSD 7.1 AMD64 or FreeBSD i386
I want use FreeBSD as Desktop and do many thing with it ,


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## hydra (Feb 3, 2009)

The first question is the amount of RAM you have, if it's around 3GB, you will surely want to go with i386, if it's above, you will need to consider the following.

Virtually all ports work on i386, but some don't on amd64 (yet), for example wine (emulation), nvidia-driver (in case you want to play 3D games and have an nVidia card), but some others like valgrind or xnview. Depends on your needs (and hardware).


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## Ole (Feb 3, 2009)

Also, other point for choosing distributive - ports with re-mark "broken" more on amd64. So, i386 have almost anything software (for desktop).


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## nickolas (Feb 3, 2009)

IMHO, it's better to use i386 on desktop and amd64 jn servers.


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## kamikaze (Feb 3, 2009)

I use amd64 on my notebook. Mainly desktop use. The only thing I miss is suspend/resume.


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## ikbendeman (Dec 14, 2009)

Really? Is the no way to use more than 3gb in FreeBSD 32? I read about PAE, but its not enabled by default and doesn't seem to be stable....


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## SirDice (Dec 14, 2009)

ikbendeman said:
			
		

> Really? Is the no way to use more than 3gb in FreeBSD 32?


This is a problem with _all_ 32 bit OS's. Not only FreeBSD.



> I read about PAE, but its not enabled by default and doesn't seem to be stable....


It's stable but to make full use of it applications (and drivers) need to be able to handle PAE.


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## zeiz (Dec 14, 2009)

It's very interesting topic. I tried amd64 on 7.1 and I only got problems with some applications. In general x64 is still experimental and gives no any advantage (unless you have really large ram, like 32GB or so). Despite x64 do recognize memore above 4GB but it also uses double for its adressing.
I even read an opinion that x64 is only to rise their sales at the moment


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## aragon (Dec 14, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> It's stable but to make full use of it applications (and drivers) need to be able to handle PAE.



Yup, and quite a few drivers aren't PAE compatible or are untested.  More details in src/sys/i386/conf/PAE.


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## thehobbit (Dec 15, 2009)

hydra said:
			
		

> Virtually all ports work on i386, but some don't on amd64 (yet)


Two more are grub and flash (specifically linux-f10-flashplugin10), it would seem.




			
				nickolas said:
			
		

> IMHO, it's better to use i386 on desktop and amd64 jn servers.


++


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## MorgothV8 (Dec 15, 2009)

linux-f10-flashplugin10 - works on amd64, some movies causes SEGV on seek, others not.... looks like flash-related bug non amd64 related


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## thehobbit (Dec 15, 2009)

MorgothV8 said:
			
		

> linux-f10-flashplugin10 - works on amd64, some movies causes SEGV on seek, others not.... looks like flash-related bug non amd64 related



Ah, does it?  When I tried 'make install clean', it died with a message saying it required i386.  Maybe I did something wrong -- my bad.


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## hedwards (Dec 16, 2009)

Since nVidia added support for AMD64 recently and I figured out how to set up wine, I've seen no particular reason to go back to the 32bit version. I'd personally rather run code that makes the most of my processor where possible.

But it really depends on how badly you need those 32bit ports and how much you dislike compiling them in 32bit mode.


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## vermaden (Feb 8, 2010)

Just wanted to add my $0.02 about i386/amd64 ...

I recently upgraded my box to 3 x 1TB drives and wanted to use ZFS on them, but ZFS does not like i386, well maybe in triangle with kernel panic ...

I was 'scared' about flash and wine on amd64, but after installing amd64 I am very positively surprised.

Flash works without any problem in amd64, even the installation methond is the same (all ports/packages with f10), VirtualBox works as usual, even wine installation is posible without much trouble.

Workspaces switching on my window manager seems little more snappy (dunno why ...), ZFS works as desired, does not panics at unixbench benchmark (I only limited ARC to 128M).

I need to try amd64 on my laptop, suspend to ram should be working on amd64 with SMP ...


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