32-bit vs. 64-bit Benchmarks

[Synergy6]

Normal desktop use, plus some gaming, movie transcoding, and development. So the Core2duo is definitely the best buy, even under a 64bit environment?

Yes.
Synergy6

[joshuapurcell]

Not counting my first two computers (an Apple II GS and then some Intel box), I've bought AMD chips for my computers every time I've had the opportunity. Given that, I'll admit that everything I've read points to Intel having the leading chip at this point with its Core 2 Duo. At the same time, the processor market is like a pendulum: this quarter Intel is the favorite while AMD was the favorite for a long time a little while back. I would look at the online support you find specific to the motherboards supporting the different chips and the communities like Phoronix to see what works best for you. If you find a group that seems to have lots of answers to questions you have and they are all running systems based on a specific hardware, then it may pay off to go with something similar to what they are running if this is one of your first systems to build.

[1c3d0g]

Of course it is. The Core 2 Duo's are some of the best CPU's Intel has ever released. Just read the online reviews, even AMD-biased websites have acknowledged that Intel has the performance crown for now.

[davidecapod]

Both Intel and AMD have great processors, but whether you use a 32-bit or 64-bit distribution, the Intel Core 2 Duo will likely take the lead. What exactly will you be using this system for?

Normal desktop use, plus some gaming, movie transcoding, and development. So the Core2duo is definitely the best buy, even under a 64bit environment?

[Michael]

Both Intel and AMD have great processors, but whether you use a 32-bit or 64-bit distribution, the Intel Core 2 Duo will likely take the lead. What exactly will you be using this system for?

[davidecapod]

Athlon64X2 64bit or Core2Duo 32bit ??

Hi guys, I want to buy a new PC but I have a doubt in buying AMD and to go with a 64bit distro or Intel and stick with 32bit...
I know that Core2Duo beats Athlon64X2, but is this the same if the second uses 64bit?
I am obviously talking about same price level, for example
E6400 vs 4600+ or E6600 vs 5000+

I have not found any benchmark around of this kind...

Thanks in advance
Davide

[joshuapurcell]

You will *never* see the "full" 4194304K as the kernel will reserve some of the RAM for itself. My 64-bit Gentoo box with 2GB RAM sees 2011MB. My 32-bit laptop sees about 1510MB out of 1.5GB. Every distro will see roughly the same amount of RAM as long as it is capable. A 32-bit distro will not be able to see much more than 3GB RAM as there is a 3GB/1GB user/kernel split set up in most 32-bit distros. If you recompile the kernel with PAE (64GB High Memory Support) you should see ~4GB. I did this on a 32-bit box running FC5 and I see about 4GB RAM now.

I'm not expecting any Linux distribution to see all of the 4GB, but since there is so much difference between the three OS's that I've tried so far I wanted to see if there were any similar differences between two 64-bit Linux distributions. I would like to say that since both Edgy64 and Gentoo64 are both using the Linux kernel that would be enough to assume they will both see the same amount of memory. But I'm not sure about that since I have no idea what relevant options were on/off when compiling the kernels for these distributions, and I know the two distributions are using different versions of the kernel.

The 32-bit memory limitations are something I'm aware of, but I am surprised at the information you gave regarding PAE and 4GB of memory under Fedora Core5. I'll have to look into possibly recompiling my current kernel with PAE enabled before doing a reinstall and seeing if that helps out.

[cakey]

Did you use the 64 bit ut2004 binary?

[MU_Engineer]

From my previous post I showed that Edgy64 could see 4047512K, which is the most I have currently been able to get an OS to see. Do you also have 4GB of memory, and if so does Gentoo64 see more memory? I haven't tested this out yet.

You will *never* see the "full" 4194304K as the kernel will reserve some of the RAM for itself. My 64-bit Gentoo box with 2GB RAM sees 2011MB. My 32-bit laptop sees about 1510MB out of 1.5GB. Every distro will see roughly the same amount of RAM as long as it is capable. A 32-bit distro will not be able to see much more than 3GB RAM as there is a 3GB/1GB user/kernel split set up in most 32-bit distros. If you recompile the kernel with PAE (64GB High Memory Support) you should see ~4GB. I did this on a 32-bit box running FC5 and I see about 4GB RAM now.

joshupurcell: Almost all Linuxes that run the same applications will run more or less the same speed. I run Gentoo and like it a lot, but to be brutally honest, it runs no faster than any other KDE distribution with unneeded daemons shut off. Gentoo is about configurability (and perhaps learning) but not speed, except in very odd cases (such as being able to tune a very specific number-crunching math app.) Gentoo is also a wonderful platform to develop on as you have a full toolkit and headers already there once you have the system up. If there is any speed to be gained from Gentoo, it's by cutting out stuff you don't need so there's less of a load on the system. The Gentoo devs are very good, but they're not magic. We are all bound by the limits of our hardware and the design of the common set of applications we all run like OpenOffice, gcc, KDE, and Gnome.

[joshuapurcell]

mknix: Thanks for the very helpful information. This type of stuff is exactly what I was interested in to help me decide between Gentoo64 and Ubuntu64. I'll continue looking for some performance information and comparisons for the two distributions and post when I find some more information.