Intel 64bit / AMD 64 bit advantage

2006-08-25 Thread Martin Miedema
I hope that I'm not starting some sort of holy war  with this question, 
but here I'll go.


I'm planning to set-up some e-mail / file servers running FreeBSD 6.1 in 
the near future and I'm wondering if it will be worth the cost to use 64 
but CPU's for this.


Also I would like to know which brand CPU would be best for these 
applications.

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Re: Intel 64bit / AMD 64 bit advantage

2006-08-27 Thread ke han
Generally speaking, mail and file server are not RAM intensive.  A 32  
proc can directly address 4GB RAM (2**32).  FreeBSD allows you to  
address more than 4GB on a 32 bit proc but limited to 4GB max per  
process.  The actual per process limit will be a bit less, I think.   
A 64 bit proc can get you 2**64 bits of directly addressable RAM and  
therefore a much higher per process setting.  But if your aren't  
investing in huge amounts of RAM, you are not getting much benefit  
from 64 over 32 bit proc.
Anyway, there is no benefit to running a mail or file server on 64  
bit process ors unless you must have more than 4GB total diectly  
addressable RAM or any single process must get near the 4GB threshold.
32 vs 64 bits does not give you any raw performance boost for most  
apps.  The exception are mathematically intensive apps which would  
benefit from handling very large integers or floats as 64 bits in one  
go instead of breaking down into more than one process cycle to push  
through the same numbers.  A mail or file server does no come close  
to needing this kind of 64 bit math.
A mail and file server is Hard drive and network intensive, NOT RAM  
intensive.
Spend your money on things like Hardware RAID and redundant power  
supplies, not 64 bit over 32 bits.

have a good day, ke han




On Aug 25, 2006, at 10:56 PM, Martin Miedema wrote:

I hope that I'm not starting some sort of holy war  with this  
question, but here I'll go.


I'm planning to set-up some e-mail / file servers running FreeBSD  
6.1 in the near future and I'm wondering if it will be worth the  
cost to use 64 but CPU's for this.


Also I would like to know which brand CPU would be best for these  
applications.

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Re: Intel 64bit / AMD 64 bit advantage

2006-08-27 Thread Wojciech Puchar

32 vs 64 bits does not give you any raw performance boost for most apps.  The


yes it will. FreeBSD/amd64 works at least 10% faster than FreeBSD/i386 on 
athlon64 machine, when i386 version were recompiled for P4. With default 
FreeBSD/i386 - it will be at least 30%.


just because it's not just 64-bit addresses, but twice 
the registers (r8-r15) allowing C compiler to generate more efficient 
code.


For now AMD64 is the fastest and cheapest architecture - at least with AMD 
processors, not intel clones. (YES now intel makes clones of AMD 
processors)

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Re: Intel 64bit / AMD 64 bit advantage

2006-08-27 Thread ke han


On Aug 28, 2006, at 4:03 AM, Wojciech Puchar wrote:

32 vs 64 bits does not give you any raw performance boost for most  
apps.  The


yes it will. FreeBSD/amd64 works at least 10% faster than FreeBSD/ 
i386 on athlon64 machine, when i386 version were recompiled for P4.  
With default FreeBSD/i386 - it will be at least 30%.


just because it's not just 64-bit addresses, but twice the  
registers (r8-r15) allowing C compiler to generate more efficient  
code.


For now AMD64 is the fastest and cheapest architecture - at least  
with AMD processors, not intel clones. (YES now intel makes clones  
of AMD processors)


I stand corrected ;-)...This is good info, thanks.

However, to the original post, you will not see 10-30 % performance  
difference on your email or file sharing between an Intel Celeron and  
AMD Opteron.   These types of  apps are Disk and Network IO bound.   
Spend your money on redundancy/fail-over of hard drive and power  
supply.  Also choosing a well regarded NIC is important.


ke han


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Re: Intel 64bit / AMD 64 bit advantage

2006-08-28 Thread Martin Miedema

ke han wrote:


On Aug 28, 2006, at 4:03 AM, Wojciech Puchar wrote:

32 vs 64 bits does not give you any raw performance boost for most 
apps.  The


yes it will. FreeBSD/amd64 works at least 10% faster than 
FreeBSD/i386 on athlon64 machine, when i386 version were recompiled 
for P4. With default FreeBSD/i386 - it will be at least 30%.


just because it's not just 64-bit addresses, but twice the registers 
(r8-r15) allowing C compiler to generate more efficient code.


For now AMD64 is the fastest and cheapest architecture - at least 
with AMD processors, not intel clones. (YES now intel makes clones of 
AMD processors)


I stand corrected ;-)...This is good info, thanks.

However, to the original post, you will not see 10-30 % performance 
difference on your email or file sharing between an Intel Celeron and 
AMD Opteron.   These types of  apps are Disk and Network IO bound.  
Spend your money on redundancy/fail-over of hard drive and power 
supply.  Also choosing a well regarded NIC is important.


ke han


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Thanks a million for this info, this saved he good bunch of money, which
I can use better some were else :)

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