i386 with PAE or AMD64 on PowerEdge with 4G RAM

[Kris Kennaway]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 05:15:30PM -0400, Martin Turgeon wrote:
> 2007/6/18, Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at freebsd.org>:
> >
> >On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 01:03:44PM -0400, Martin Turgeon wrote:
> >>  I just receive 2 PowerEdge servers (a 1950 and a 860) both with 4G of
> >RAM. I
> >>  installed FreeBSD 6.2 Release i386 on both of them. Unfortunately, only
> >3,5G
> >>  is recognized on the 860 and 3,3G on the 1950.
> >>  dmesg on 860:
> >>  real memory  = 3757834240 (3583 MB)
> >>  avail memory = 3678318592 (3507 MB)
> >>
> >>  I am facing a difficult decision. Should I use i386 with PAE enabled in
> >the
> >>  kernel (I read a lot of warnings using it) or should I go with AMD64?
> >Which
> >>  branch should I follow?
> >
> >Based on what I've read from some of the porters and miscellaneous
> >others, generally-speaking there's too many issues with amd64 (in the
> >sense of 32-bit vs. 64-bit compatibility -- not the fault of the kernel
> >or otherwise) to consider it worth switching to.
> >
> >I personally don't run 64-bit OSes because most developers still use
> >32-bit machines and don't have a way to develop/test in 64-bit
> >environments.
> >
> >That said, I'd recommend you stick with i386 + PAE, simply for
> >guaranteed application compatibility.
> 
> 
> My setup is fairly standard (as I described), should I expect problem with
> 64 bit version of these programs?

No.  I'd go with amd64 personally.

Kris