Do you use a 64bit CPU in your main computer? Come in and vote, let’s see what the OSNews readers are running. If yes, leave a comment if you are using a clean 64bit OS with it too.Note: To view and vote for this poll you will need javascript.
Poll: Do you use a 64bit CPU in your main computer?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
No, not in my main system
I have an SGI Octane (64-bit R10k @ 195mhz) that I’m trying to get rid of in order to get some money to buy an AMD64 system.
A faster MIPS box along with a SPARC, Alpha and PPC (all 64 bit) is still just a dream for me unfortunatly
Incidently, if anyone wants an Octane (and a 20″ monitor if you need) it’s a 195mhz/384Mb/18Gb 7,200rpm (36Gb 10,000rpm optional extra) and I’m in the UK
AMD64: It’s got power, doesn’t drain the local nuclear plant and it’s quiet. This provides a really nice working environnement.
Not using a 64bit OS yet. I need Windows for some apps and I don’t see any advantages in running Linux 64bit on a desktop (no 3D work, etc.).
What good would that do?
I have an Athlon64 laptop which I’ve thrashed about a number of x86-64 Linux distros and pre-release WinXP editions, all of which seem to be lesser cousins to their 32-bit counterparts, esp in terms of drivers (prism54, anyone?). I want to settle on a reliable OS before I commit to replacing an aging P4 workstation with (hopefully) some nice dual-Opteron gear. But will the OS options leave me feeling cold?
I hope not because I want to move in the right direction, looking forward (I’ve had a 64-bit SPARC for donkey’s years) and can do without a Flash plugin for a number of months. But how long until marginal becomes mainstream? I wonder.
I use an AMD64, and I try to run Fedora Core x86_64 on it, but recently I’ve been having problems. So currently I’m on WinXP Pro.
Love the AMD 64 proc, got it running on my system now. I don’t really know why I purchased a 64-bit processor, since right now you can’t really take advantage of full 64-bit support on Windows.
But hey, the 3000+ AMD 64 for 130 bucks and overclocking it to a 2.2 GHz with stock cooling – you just can’t beat that!
Hopefully Windows XP 64 Edition will come out in April, like they say.
Well, it is nifty, but not a big deal without a 64bit OS (couldn’t get FC3 64 to load) or 64 bit apps to run on it. I should have bought a Mac.
Definately has power to burn. “Cool n Quiet” powersaving is a nice touch too.
Mine is running gentoo 2004.3 amd64. Everything is native 64bit bar Firefox (needed flash player) and OOorg (didn’t have the disk space to compile it at the time).
UT2004’s native 64 bit binary works like a charm, nVidia provides 64 bit video drivers too. For the moments when I really need to run windows, I still have it installed.
What about my GameCube?! Does that count? 😀
If you can browse osnews with it, then yes.
I think the technology isnt far enough to really be used. There is only a tiny fragment of hardware thats based on 64 bit. The Software side is a little better, especially Linux, Windows is far behind (as always), but still not worth the troubles. The next system I’ll buy will be a 64, but that’s at least 2 years to come.
Currently running an Intel Celeron 1,5 GHz
I have a 3200 AMD64 notebook.
It makes all the other machines I use seem so slow
Go AMD
No, but I think my Nintendo 64 does.
I have an AMD64. I’ve tried several 64-bit OSes, XP64 Beta, Longhorn Alpha, and several Linux distros, but none have been good enough to use full time. I’m waiting for XP64 Final.
Running gentoo/ amd64 2005.1 on a dual Opteron – the fastest system I’ve ever seen, and gentoo did a great job. I’m pretty confident that gentoo is the best 64bit OS currently…
BTW, Anonymous (IP: —.urbanet.ch): I’m also into 3D, and have Softimage|XSI running on my box – also tried Pro/E, Maya and Houdini, everything worked just fine and really fast on 64bit Linux.
AMD64 3000+, Cool n Quiet turned off (when it is on CPU runs at a half of a speed and OC is impossible by the way)
SuSE 9.2 64-bit.
32-bit apps:
Firefox (reason as in the post above -> no flash and no java plugin) plus OO.org 2.0 beta.
Yup, I have a nice 64bit UltraSPARC IIi running at 270Mhz– it runs Solaris9 with Xfce4/CDE.
Really cool machine.
AMD64 3500+
Mulitboot, mainly between XP Media Center Edition 2005 and XP/Server 2003 x64 Edition
Using an Athlon64 3200+, but running Windows 2000 primarily. Have FC3/x86_64 installed also, and use it for 64-bit-cleanness tests of the C and C++ code I write.
In the past I really enjoyed Mandrake, but they lost me as a user when they closed off the x86_64 version from free download.
I now run Windows on my amd64. I have tried several versions of Linux (Gentoo being the best for amd64 IMHO) but it can be far too much hassle. At the end of the day I just need to get work done. I think things will settle down further when MS release XP64.
Yeah!http://www.gc-linux.org/
the next time I feel the urge to upgrade. Kind of waiting for a killer 64 bit only game though.
Running Gentoo atm and its been working great.
I’m running a 64bit linux-system on gentoo and i’m really impressed.
go64!
I upgraded from a dual p2-300mhz to a nice shiny p4-3ghz just two week ago. I was considering going to 64Bit, but decided the price wasn’t worth the extra, this machine is going to last me for a fair few years to come now. I have the software I need and I don’t update to the latest and greatest stuff because most of the time its the latest and greatest junk.
If it wasn’t for my dual’s motherboard dropping dead, i would have still been using it now.
Hopfully the 64bit buzz will actually let people do more then they can now, I just see extra bloat in applications because they can without making real funcationality from the 64bit chips.
My SUN Ultra 2 is not exactly quiet nor is it fast, but its fine for normal stuff I do like browsing, typesetting, etc.
Im running Solaris 9 64bit on this dual-cpu box together with pkgsrc (the netbsd package system) and it works perfectly.
I have an Athlon 3500+ with FreeBSD 5.3-amd64 running on it. Awesome chip, and some things (eg, oggenc) get a huge speedboost from running in 64bit mode.
Only problem is that it’s lacking some 32bit-only niceties, like the nvidia drivers.
i will build my own x86_64 box in about another year, i want to make sure the software side is caught up with the hardware side before i make the switch, then once all it said and done i will donate this computer to a worthy cause like a school or non-profit org
I haven’t even broken the 1 GHz barrier. My main computer is still an Athlon 700 MHz (but overclocked to 850 MHz).
And I use 64 bit Linux, since the post asked to follow up.
I run a pair of Opteron 846’s in a Tyan board designed for the 200 series. At the time I built the machine I found a source of 846’s that was cheaper than purchasing 246’s on eBay, so that’s what I ended up with ! I run SATA drives, which weren’t supported properly under Linux at the time of construction, and forced me to run Windows XP as my main OS (previously Linux). So now all my Linux/*BSD/other distros run under MS Virtual PC. I hope one day to move to a proper 64-bit OS but am not in any rush at the moment.
If you don’t have more than a couple gigabytes of virtual memory (RAM + swap) in your computer, then it doesn’t do much of anything for you, in general. However, in the case of Opteron/Athlon 64, AMD actually made the x86 architecture less broken and, in that case, 64-bit mode can actually give you a speed boost (not due to 64-bitness but due to less-broken-x86-kludged-ness).
On other less-broken architectures, like SPARC, moving to 64-bit is really only for the memory capacity, not speed (64-bit on a good architecture can actually be _slower_ than 32-bit by a little).
So: AMD64 = more memory capacity + more speed
Others = more memory capacity + speed about the same
im running full 64bit gentoo which is almost impossible to tell the difference to a 32bit install, its that complete.
lets be honest unless you are are buying a laptop you pretty much have to be a moron to not buy an amd64 these days, given the recent dual core benchmarks intel is in serious trouble for at least another 18 months.
Actually, I got my AMD64 yesterday and now I sit here with a fresh Fedora install! My first 64bit machine!
On this system I’ve bought a hd-rack thing so I can easily change harddisk. I want to test Solaris 10, and some other OS:es as well but I really hate fiddling with multiboot crap.
I thought I made a good deal buying the cheapest case in the store. The cpu peaks at ~30W (3G2 90nm Winchester core) and the gfx is passively cooled (ati 9200SE) but the cpu and case/psu fans sound like a bloody vacuum cleaner! Isn’t that irony..
I failed to find lm_sensor option to reduce rpm on fans (the cpu is ~30 deg C) but failed, so I had to fall back to solder resistors on the fans but I only had one suitable at home..
It’s interesting to see in the poll that actually no one is running with intels 64 bit stuff. AMD and IBM are really ahead with the 64 bit story. Probably also because AMD and IBM don’t use emulation to run older 32 bit software.
running ubuntu x86 on a amd64 3000+. forgot to make sure my wireless was supported in the kernel…. ARGHH! so i need to do ndiswrapper on a 32bit driver. don’t think you can do that on the 64 bit kernel. i also play warcraft 3 in cedega. everything else would be fine though. not that i need to address that much ram or harddrive space though, so a switch to 64 bit is not needed anytime soon. but when i want to i can make the switch.
No, maybe next time.
I couldn’t find a 64 bit intel or AMD board without onboard/integrated components. I couldn’t find a PCI-Express board without that junk either.
So for now I’m sticking with an Intel i875P with a Pentium 4.
-Bob
and it rocks
but won’t have it for another four weeks.
SUSE9.3/Win64 here we come!
running windows x64 edition v1433. nice but my digital camera software doesnt run on 64 bit yet.
i wish slackware and dropline had 64 bit editions.
I recently switched my desktop computer from i386 to alpha. A truely wonderful computer. Running NetBSD I have all the neccessary applications I need. 600MHz which is fast enough to play fullscreen divx episodes of my favourite tv series. I am about to put SCSI in it and buy a 19″ TFT making it into a really great computer suitable for learning more about “stuff that really matters”, namely programming and NetBSD! 🙂
If you have the latest i386 gear, 4 GHz sweet lightning fast computer, huge IDE disk, but STILL get bored while using it.. Perhaps it is time for you to switch to something more exotic? I finally got the chance to do it and.. wow..
My PC has 64 MBs of RAM, does that count? :-s
i wont until i can afford the uppgrade from my dual mp 2400+
to dual opteron. a dual rig is the only way tu surf
“In the past I really enjoyed Mandrake, but they lost me as a user when they closed off the x86_64 version from free download.”
Well, then you lost yourself, because they never did any such thing. The X86-64 is still available for free download.
The bigest problem with 64bit systems right now is the simple lack of real 64 bit apps.
People always point to 64bit linux to show that there is no speed increese, but the problem is that you simply can’t take an app made for 32bit and compile it for 64 bits and expect to see a speed increese. Just as taking a 16 bit win 3.1 app and compiling it for 32bits isn’t going to make the program run any faster.
Ware 64 bits is going to shine is things that are very cpu heavy such as video encoding and games, but again the program has to be written to take advantage of the cpu
I have a “mini-cluster” with 1 athlon 64 fx-51 running the arch x86_64 and 3 athlon 64 3000+s using msi u-atx boards (thats y i call it the mini-cluster ;-p) being netbooted from it. I use it for updating the arch packages and other stuff.
Ultra 10 440 and Solaris 9
Not going the 64bit path for a little while. Wait till I can afford to update my system to dually AMD64 from it’s current Dual AMD MP. Am looking forward to a quieter system and faster overall responsiveness but also I want to let the newly implemented technology get sorted befor jumping. Maybe the end of the year or next year. Lots of life left in my current rig.
Sun Ultra2 Elite3D (yup, those existed as a stock config, but never showed up on Sun’s System Handbook), with every little gizmo I could stuff in (like the SBUS-to-PCMCIA bridge
).
2 x 300 MHz, 1280 MB RAM, Solaris 10. Runs Just Fine ™.
So if I have understood the benefits with 64bit correctly it mostly comes down to pointers beeing twice the size of 32bit pointers.
Now if they are twice the size, wouldn’t they use twice the bandwith on the busses, and twice the size in memory and on disks? This all sounds as a great way to half my systems performance…
My old system had gone a little “elderly”, so I pushed into to some distant family and replaced it – and x86 64bit support was a strict requirement for the next one. So far so good, and it’s still running fine and fast in 32bit mode.
The point is that I do have some uses for all the usual uses, like 64bit memory mapped files (genomic databases, video editing), more general registers (virtual machines creation), and more physical ram than /3GB. But at the moment I can live with 32bit. However, I do know that MY computer will have multiple gigabytes of ram in less than a year from now.
Really however, all computers will have multiple gigabytes of physical ram in the next two years, and I do intend to switch ALL computers in the neighbourhood at once to 64bit to limit the maintenance (you know, neighbours pay with a smile). That’s why ANY replacement within my reach will require 64bit support – or else… I have a good reason to drop that system from my list in the near future.
well yes you are correct and thats why amd64 can handel 32bit pointers. but when your doing mat with large numbers you can do it in fewer operations with 64bit pointers. then there is the register issue where they have added more registers in the
amd64 spec more register is always good.
LOL!
Since this doesn’t happen, perhaps you should renew your research efforts…;-)
When I upgraded my computer from an iMac to an eMac, I was skeptical about whether the amount I was to spend on it could be justified – compared to the G4, the PowerPC 970 is a world apart from the G4 – that coupled with gigs of memory (yeah, I tend to go nuts when I upgrade the memory), it is a great little pocket-rocket.
I think the biggest improvement won’t necessarily be from the actualy 64bitness, but the architectural and design improvements – in the case of AMD64 (unlike Intel), consumers will see the benefit of the on-die memory controller, which should reduce memory latacy, more registers as to allow greater crunching of numbers when it comes to things like encoding and compression (assuming that they CODEC’s/software are tuned).
It will be interesting, however, to see where AMD will go in the next few years – if SUN got their act together, canned their SPARC workstation range, replaced it with and end to end product range, from workstation with Opteron down to Athlon on the low cost desktop, they would make a great killing in the market.
Not running an 64bit OS (yet). Planning on using a Linux distribution. Possibly Slackware.
Well, I got my G5 fairly cheap at the college where I work, otherwise it would have been hard to convince the wife that I *need* a G5. I am thinking of ditching my p4 based SFF pc for a SFF athlon64, but the only reason I use the PC is to play enemy territory.
Home:
G5 1.8Ghz, 768MB Ram, 380GB Disk
Work:
iStar 2-way 600mhz, 12GB Ram, 280GB Disk
POWER4 3-way 1.2Ghz, 16GB Ram, 1.3TB Disk
Were thinking of drop the iStar and getting a 5-way POWER5 with 24GB Ram and 3TB disk.
What is the equivalent AMD64 from Intel?
my new notebook is an …. amd64 3400+, and I’ve installed FC3 x86_64, it seems really good on this powerfull hardware.
I wait only the wireless driver to full support, all the rest is perfectly supported.
I personally think that is a great machine! very fast and stable.
tips: if you live in alaska or in siberia is also usefull to warm up your room…
in pure 64bit flavor, since autum 2004
my main server machine at home is an HP9000 64 bit machine, 1GB ram, fiber channel disk and of course 64 bit hpux 11.
VXVM filesystem too. Cool stuff
After a couple of years of using a dual PIII at home, and a P4 with hyperthreading at the office, I was completely blown away by the raw power of this thing. I’m gonna get me a Dual Opteron next!
I have an amd64 i use 64bit windows and 32bit linux, but I dont spend much time in windows.
But I have a Sun Ultra 5 workstation with an Ultrasparc IIi running Gentoo. My main machine is a Mac though.
i’d rather have that x86 instruction set dropped, it’s a design which made sense in the beginning of the ’80, not nowadays. when the os needs to be recompiled for 64bit, you might as wel fix the instructionset (and end up with a ppc
)
it’s not a bad thing to remove the real mode support, we do not have the intention to run windows 3.11 on our amd64 boxes.
Main box runs a mix of FC3/Rawhide amd64
server box runs CentOS 4 amd64
sun blade 100 running Sol10
My main computer is now an Athlon64 laptop, running 64 bit Ubuntu. It’s great for porting scientific applications.
Michael
i just upgraded my pc from a p4 2.4ghz to AMD64 3500+ 2.2ghz and it really delivers performance but not stability. im running winxp pro sp2 and my games lock up and so do my apps like cdex and itunes when ripping music. so far its been a terrible experience.
Especially with my custom 2.6.11 kernel
I have an Athlon 64 3200+ in my laptop, and run Ubuntu 5.04 Preview on it. Previously used 32bit distro, but now ATI have released 64bit Radeon drivers and Broadcom Windows 64bit driver can be used with NDISWrapper, I have gone completely 64bit. There is a noticeable speed increase from the 32bit distro on the same hardware. Probably due to all those extra registers I would imagine.
I have a Dell PowerEdge at my office that I remotely access from home as well via NX client. At work we also use thin clients running NX client and I can barely tell the diff between local network and remote access.
The specs:
Dual Xeon 3.2GHz
5 SCSI RAID-5 10k 73GB HDDs
2GB RAM
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
Dual Redundant Powersupply
Tape Backup unit
There is barely a load on the CPUs with over two dozen simultaneous users doing the usual sorts of stuff- web surfing, email, open office apps, and a few custom apps. It’s also running MySQL, Apache, Squid, DHCP, LDAP, Postfix, CUPS, vsFTP, SSH and the NX server.
runs perfect
Gentoo for the OS. It’s wicked fast for crypto and compiling code.
But I’m considering replacing it with the i386 version, because I’m having problems with some software, like mono and Win32codecs…
I’ve got a AMD Athlon 64 Mobility in my laptop, which is my main computer. I’m not running a 64bit OS, I will be next month when Windows XP Professional x64 is released.
Not really my main machine, but I have a 360MHz Ultra 5 that runs Solaris 9. Fans are a bit noisy but it is fine for the web, email and OpenOffice. It also has an AMD 400MHz PCI card installed running Win 2000.
my main server machine at home is an HP9000 64 bit machine
hmmmm… lemme think about that…. didn’t get it..douh!
Forgot to mention I run Solaris 9 sparcv9…
“What is the equivalent AMD64 from Intel?”
Intel Pentium 4 with Extended Memory Technology.
3200 Athlon64 Laptop.
Very nice system currently running Ubuntu 64b, Mandrake 32b and XP Pro 32b.
I run Solaris 8 on Sparc64 hardware. It’s my main computer at work (while I use OpenBSD/x86 at home).
This is very valuable machine to test and find bugs in my (and other’s) code because it assumes the exacts oposites from x86 (little indian, 64bits) and is very strict on alignment issues.
Using solaris (rather than linux or *bsd) on this helps to remove most gnucisms/linuxisms from the code (well, those that pass over my tests on OpenBSD).
I just miss the native sun compiler (just too expensive ). And a solaris/sparc64 valgrind or purify would be the final touch !
i’ve had my eye on a few amd64 laptops but the sound software i run will NOT run on anything 64 and it seems to be a common fault with XP on 64, but once XP64 comes out i may just have to go grab me a AMD64 laptop to play with, by then the sound issuse may have been fixed if not i’ll play games on it till my fingers fall off [sVen]
It is sorta’ my main machine… running MythTV on it (it’s in the basement), 380 gig of storage, plus it runs LTSP for the two thin clients I have in the house. Am happy to say I have my wife using it, started with XFCE, now she’s using Gnome. 4-year old loves tuxpaint, but gets frustrated with Frozen Bubble. As for running a 64-bit OS, I dont’ need that yet, but wanted that option in a year or so. I’m in no hurry, this machine is way overkill for what I’m using it for (but cool, it transcodes an hour-long MPEG-2 file to MPEG-4 in less than 40 minutes).
Just built a 64 bit system for my birthday, i actually went down .4 Ghz (the new chip runs at 1.8) and it is a power of 10 faster than my old 2.2 Ghz celeron. Gentoo on x86_64 is great, i play trigger and cube. They both run really well with the nvidia-drivers.
I’m running FreeBSD 5.3 on a amd64 box. Overal it runs great, not hardware problems. The only things lagging is a native build of Java (running the linux binary JDK from the ports under Linux emulation), and openoffice, which currently does not build on amd64, but that should change very soon. Instead, I’m running a beta of OO2.0-beta also under emulation.
Though not as problem free as using a 32bit proc, it’s certainly not far off.
I’m running FreeBSD 5.3 on a amd64 box. Overall it runs great, no hardware problems. The only thing missing right now is openoffice, which currently does not build on amd64, but that should change very soon. Instead, I’m running a beta of OO2.0-beta also under emulation.
I also have problems with the enigmail plugin for Thunderbird (built from ports), but I’m not 100% sure if that is due to my arch.
Though not as problem free as using a 32bit proc, it’s certainly not far off.
Got my dual G5 for Xmas. Put dual monitors on it. Love it.
I’ve got an Athlon64 3000+ and run Gentoo/AMD64 alongside Windows XP. Ogg Vorbis encoding sure is lightning quick in Gentoo/AMD64.
AMD and Debian GNU/Linux running perfectly.
1-Sun Ultra 2 with Dual USPARC II 300mhz 1GB Mem Solaris 9
1-Sun Ultra 5 USPARC IIi 333mhz 512MB Mem Solaris 9
1-Sun Ultra 10 USPARC IIi 440mhz 1GB Mem Solaris 10
Solaris 10 box (U10) is my normal “workstation”, others are “sandboxes” for dev and testing. No problems.
AMD64 3000+ on a MSI K8T-Neo FSR with 512 MB. Running W2K on one disk, and SuSE 9.1, 32 Bit version.(with some upgrades) on the other.
Use to have an Athlon with the hoover attachment
until the MB died. I like this one much better because it’s so much quieter, and doesn’t get as hot (my HDs appreciate that).
Maybe latter I’ll add more memory (3 Gb on this board), and some SATAs with a better warrenty than one year.
Got 2 350Mhz UltraSPARC III, running Solaris 8 IIRC. Far from my first machine though, but it is a 64 bit OS…
Running a 32 bit OS as my main OS though
I’ve tried some 64 bit ones, but it’s hard to get some things going (like 32 bit real player, for example).
I run Ubuntu Hoary AMD64 on a separate test partition, and so far that is going really great. I just need to work out how to get 32 bit firefox running on there so I can have the flash plugin.
My main browser is opera, which doesn’t have a 64 bit version – I hope I can get it to work in Ubuntu. That and a few other niggling things I have to get to work before I can switch to Ubuntu 64bit fulltime.
I downloaded a beta of winXP 64 bit, but never bothered installing it.
Hardware: yes, a dual G5 Powermac. OS: nope, not yet. Waiting on Tiger.
Dual G5 here. and as per someone else above, I am waiting for Tiger before I have a fully 64bit OS.
My home machine is an AMD 64 3500 running x86_64 SuSE 9.2.
Very fast and stable. Runs UT, Doom 3, etc. under SuSE without issue.
Way faster than my same priced Intel P4 3.2 Prescott. I don’t know why anyone would buy Intel these days.
AMD64 3500: Currently running Debian Sarge 32 bit and occasionally windows 32 for games. I’ve run both Windows and Linux 64 bit but missed too many of the 32 bit apps. Except for the windows gaming I don’t realize any big gains. I’ve gotta say that the Quiet ‘N Cool is a real plus.
AMD64 3000+, 1Gig ram, running Gentoo Linux.
I wish I had another just like it 😉
Eugenia,
A “what 64 bit distro” are you running would be interesting
Fedora
CentOS
Ubuntu
Debian
Suse
Mandrake
Gentoo
Tiger (when its out, and you should have a mac)
FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD
Solaris
HP-UX
SGI
AIX
windows
Of course if you throw in “home desktop” some of these will be tossed out.
i’m running a 3200+ with pure 64bit gentoo and the 64bit developers relese of winxp (its free, poke around microsoft.com).
defintely runs cooler than any system i’ve ever used, and its damn fast too.