Which version with a Xeon X3210

[Roland Smith]

On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 10:31:33AM +0000, Chris Hastie wrote:
> I've just ordered a new server based on the Intel Xeon X3210. This is a
> quad core processor supporting the Intel 64 (formerly known as Intel®
> EM64T, according to the flyer) instruction set.
> 
> I plan to install FreeBSD 6.2 on it, but I'm not clear whether I should
> be using the AMD64 version or the x86 version.

If you routinely run out of address space on i386 with your workload,
you should use amd64.

It is possible for amd64 to be faster than i386 (more registers, among
other things), but it depends on the workload (an IO-bound workload will
see little difference, I suspect). You'll have to test that.

If you depend on binary and/or i386-only ports (e.g. nv driver, wine,
flash plugin) you should probably go with i386.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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