I've been using Slackware for a long time and I'm wondering what your
experiences have been with Slackware 10.x on AMD64. Do you still see a
performance increase (the last Slackware system I used was a PIII
laptop) even though the entire distribution isn't 64-bit?

Any 'gotchas' installing 10.x Slackware on AMD64?
(ie. Nvidia/ATI drivers, etc.)

Or is it better to stick with Intel at this point?

Thanks.

--Douglas

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 08:59:18 -0800, dcarmich wrote:
> I've been using Slackware for a long time and I'm wondering what your
> experiences have been with Slackware 10.x on AMD64. Do you still see a
> performance increase (the last Slackware system I used was a PIII
> laptop) even though the entire distribution isn't 64-bit?

In the 32-bit world I got much more performance increasement by using a
SATA disk, and adding RAM. AMD64 can be a lot faster for certain
applications, but when an algorithm only does 32-bit math, there won't be
much of a speed increase. But software will probably be optimized more for
64-bit architectures in the future, so, it is not a bad investment. BTW,
there is an unofficial AMD64 port of Slackware Linux called SLAMD64 made
by Fred Emmott:

ftp://ftp.scarlet.be/pub/slamd64/

> Any 'gotchas' installing 10.x Slackware on AMD64?

I didn't encounter any problems.

-- Daniel

> I've been using Slackware for a long time and I'm wondering what your
> experiences have been with Slackware 10.x on AMD64. Do you still see a
> performance increase (the last Slackware system I used was a PIII
> laptop) even though the entire distribution isn't 64-bit?

AMD64 CPU's have other features that make them very fast, besides the 64bit
operations. The integrated memory controller, the hyper-transport system
etc.

And if you plan to add more than 2GB RAM, that's far easier on an AMD64 CPU
than on any 32-bit CPU, since the CPU can nativelly address all that
memory, and there's no need for complicated schemes like PAE etc.

So even if you run 32bit Slackware you'll see good performance improvements.

> Any 'gotchas' installing 10.x Slackware on AMD64?
> (ie. Nvidia/ATI drivers, etc.)

Until you run in 32bit mode there's no difference between an AMD64 cpu and
any other x86 CPU. Just make sure you have the latest BIOS on your
motherboard, that has coused a lot of problems to me.

> Or is it better to stick with Intel at this point?

I don't see a reason to pay the premium price for an Intel CPU.

--
damjan

On 28 Feb 2005 08:59:18 -0800, dcarmich@ourservers.net wrote:

> I've been using Slackware for a long time and I'm wondering what your
> experiences have been with Slackware 10.x on AMD64. Do you still see a
> performance increase (the last Slackware system I used was a PIII
> laptop) even though the entire distribution isn't 64-bit?
>
> Any 'gotchas' installing 10.x Slackware on AMD64?
> (ie. Nvidia/ATI drivers, etc.)

hmm, afaik, pat builds and uses slackware 10/10.1 on a amd64 machine. and
as for amd64 port, i heard people succesfully rebuilt whole slackware for
amd64 from source...
but for most people, standard slackware with custom amd64 kernel should be
nice enough. maybe some speed crucial packages (hmm, maybe xorg and kde
from standard packages, video playing/transcoding, compilers, openoffice,
server stuff on big and demanding servers, similar big and processor eating
stuff and stuff you use a lot on regular basis), but imo most of it isnt
really worth it to do it manually, and anybody with a life should really
wait for a amd64 slackware instead of rolling its own

dcarmich@ourservers.net wrote:
> I've been using Slackware for a long time and I'm wondering what your
> experiences have been with Slackware 10.x on AMD64. Do you still see a
> performance increase (the last Slackware system I used was a PIII
> laptop) even though the entire distribution isn't 64-bit?
>
> Any 'gotchas' installing 10.x Slackware on AMD64?
> (ie. Nvidia/ATI drivers, etc.)
>
> Or is it better to stick with Intel at this point?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --Douglas
>
Just saw this thread: my 2 cents worth for posterity.

I run a 3 boot system: MSDOS, Win2Ksp4, Slack10. Formerly this was my
venerable slot a Athlon800 VIA KX133 512MB G4ti4800. Well, on day the
AOPEN AK72 mb went flaky: memory could only run at 100MHz, intermittent
hd paging etc errors. So I prepped win2k for the new mb (default Win2k
drivers etc) after a big drive scare (thought I lost my 40GB data drive)
but left DOS and Slack alone.

Athlon64 3000+ skt 939 90nm
Gigabyte GA-k8ns-939
Mushkin PC3200 DDR400 512MB

all else the same. Well, to make a long story more tedious ;-)
Win2k was toast. DOS was fine and Slack was perfect. I used Slack to
recover some data off the Win2k ntfs partition (emails, some prog
settings, save games, etc), then wiped the winders part and loaded WinXP
for fun.

The point is: Slack, or linux, wasn't fazed by the AMD64 and mb swap
and fired up like nothing happened (except a massive speed boost!). So,
although i didn't "install" it on AMD64, the previous install works
perfectly.

Linux Rules!

Now to stfu the rest about my OS choices:
1. DOS - old games, various command line tools for hardware diag, and
nostalgia
2. WinXP - wife, kids, games, web dev, various office/science apps and
to keep an eye on M$ tech to see if it does anything interesting.
3. Slack - computer science learning tool, C etc, keep up with the "next
big think" various apps and tools. Does the same stuff and more as XP,
and I can fool around with it without freaking the wife (eek! you
changed something?!?!?!)

Mad-Eye Moody wrote:

> On 28 Feb 2005 08:59:18 -0800, dcarmich@ourservers.net wrote:
>
>> I've been using Slackware for a long time and I'm wondering what your
>> experiences have been with Slackware 10.x on AMD64. Do you still see a
>> performance increase (the last Slackware system I used was a PIII
>> laptop) even though the entire distribution isn't 64-bit?
>>
>> Any 'gotchas' installing 10.x Slackware on AMD64?
>> (ie. Nvidia/ATI drivers, etc.)
>
> hmm, afaik, pat builds and uses slackware 10/10.1 on a amd64 machine. and
> as for amd64 port, i heard people succesfully rebuilt whole slackware for
> amd64 from source...

ftp://ftp.scarlet.be/pub/slamd64/

> but for most people, standard slackware with custom amd64 kernel should be
> nice enough. maybe some speed crucial packages (hmm, maybe xorg and kde
> from standard packages, video playing/transcoding, compilers, openoffice,
> server stuff on big and demanding servers, similar big and processor
> eating stuff and stuff you use a lot on regular basis), but imo most of it
> isnt really worth it to do it manually, and anybody with a life should
> really wait for a amd64 slackware instead of rolling its own

For doing those individual packages, you already need the cross compilation
toolchain, glibc, and various other libraries (and you'll still need 32-bit
libraries for all of them) so it's not worth it IMO.

--
Fred Emmott
(http://www.fredemmott.co.uk)

You should take a look at www.slamd64.com.

// - zewn


On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 dcarmich@ourservers.net wrote:

> I've been using Slackware for a long time and I'm wondering what your
> experiences have been with Slackware 10.x on AMD64. Do you still see a
> performance increase (the last Slackware system I used was a PIII
> laptop) even though the entire distribution isn't 64-bit?
>
> Any 'gotchas' installing 10.x Slackware on AMD64?
> (ie. Nvidia/ATI drivers, etc.)
>
> Or is it better to stick with Intel at this point?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --Douglas
>
>

"Sebastian" <zewn@soffan.se> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.62.0505050700130.15508@localhost.. .
> You should take a look at www.slamd64.com.
>
> // - zewn

ah I've been looking for this too. Looking to upgrade to amd64 and looking
for slackware support etc.

Has anyone used this? Experiences?

Sebastian wrote:
> You should take a look at www.slamd64.com.
>
> // - zewn
>
>
> On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 dcarmich@ourservers.net wrote:
>
>> I've been using Slackware for a long time and I'm wondering what your
>> experiences have been with Slackware 10.x on AMD64. Do you still see a
>> performance increase (the last Slackware system I used was a PIII
>> laptop) even though the entire distribution isn't 64-bit?
>>
>> Any 'gotchas' installing 10.x Slackware on AMD64?
>> (ie. Nvidia/ATI drivers, etc.)

I'm running Slackware 10.1 with no problems at all on my AMD Athlon64
3200+ , and I am using Nvidia's driver for my Geforce card.
Why do you think an AMD platform be problematic for Slackware?

Cheers, Eric

Eric Hameleers wrote on 05 May 2005 11:12:49 +0200:

> I'm running Slackware 10.1 with no problems at all on my AMD Athlon64
> 3200+ , and I am using Nvidia's driver for my Geforce card.
> Why do you think an AMD platform be problematic for Slackware?

Same for me, Slackware-10.1 on AMD Athlon 64 and NVidia FX5500 video
card with NVidia proprietary drivers, all is fine.
This is not in 64 bits mode, since it is normal Slackware-10.1, 32 bits.

(My next challange: getting TV out of the NVidia card, umm... not very
well documented, *even* in Windows).