Hardware Selection for AMD64 + Linux? 89
MrClever asks: "After a disaster involving my cat, a pot of coffee and my workstation, I am now in the market for a new machine. I thought I'd jump on the AMD64 wagon and keep running Linux. After some initial investigation, it became clear that ATi, Promise and other manufacturers don't have 64bit drivers for Linux, which rules out most motherboards with onboard P/SATA RAID, thus limiting my available choices. I know you can run 32bit on AMD64, but if I wanted that I'd get an AthlonXP. So, what AMD64 hardware is the best supported in 64bit mode under Linux? Seems NVidia have 64bit drivers, does anyone else?"
I think I know what happened (Score:1, Funny)
Oh, you mean your cat just knocked the coffee onto the computer? Never mind...
Re:I think I know what happened (Score:1)
Re:Movies way of destroying computer (Score:1, Offtopic)
Unless of course it's a first edition iMac.
don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes out! (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, this doesn't apply if you're thinking about the Opteron, with its Socket 940.
Re:don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes o (Score:2)
Re:don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes o (Score:2)
Re:don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes o (Score:2)
Re:don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes o (Score:2)
YMMV, of course.
Re:don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes o (Score:2)
At the end of the day 64bit is the next step for general purpose computing. By jumping on the 64bit bandwagon you are preparing yourself for the future. Although at the moment you may find little advantages in speed or performance for certain tasks, as soon as the software begins to reap the advantages you will be ready.Generally speaking you aint going to lose a huge amount with 32bit backward applications, as soon as that 64bit "killer app" comes along you will be ready and wai
Re:don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes o (Score:2)
Re:don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes o (Score:1)
Hardware RAID on the motherboard (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hardware RAID on the motherboard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hardware RAID on the motherboard (Score:4, Informative)
The real difference is just that the exact layout of the raid is a pre-set standard by the BIOS vendor, and thus if you run Promise or whoever's softraid drivers in both OSes, you can have multi-platform softraid for a dual-boot setup. Linux boots just fine from a software raid device on it's own without this stuff, I assume windows can do the same.
Re:Hardware RAID on the motherboard (Score:3, Informative)
boot. I don't see the disadvantage, frankly.
Even the CPU cost of soft RAID is vanishingly small
these days, when caches are 2-8MB and CPUs are
approaching 5000 bogomips.
I see the difference as being MORE PORTS. Lets
me cram more drives into the box.
Re:Hardware RAID on the motherboard (Score:1)
The way I've got mine set up is with
Promise works fine (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Promise works fine (Score:2)
Re:Major problems with Promise tech support (Score:2)
Consider 3ware... (Score:4, Informative)
Promise is junk anyhow; it's not a hardware raid controller, just a dumb ATA controller card with software RAID drivers.
Just do your own software raid in Linux or buy a real (e.g 3ware) controller.
-Isaac
Re:Consider 3ware... (Score:3, Interesting)
I just deplowyed two Tyan Thunder K8W workstations equiped with Escalade 7500 RAID controllers.
Its on a research vessel ready to SAT and deport by mid next month. I've never heard anything about this.
*suddenly nervous*
Re:Consider 3ware... (Score:1, Informative)
everything should be fine except the 7500s are a PoS. Hardware RAID like Intels boards are much better. or just use linuxes software raid which is much more stable anyway.
Re:Consider 3ware... (Score:1)
Re:Consider 3ware... (Score:2)
I have two Tyan S2882 (K8Spro)-based computers, and the 3ware 7506-8 works only in slot 3 (PCI-X bus A, IIRC), thus degrading the whole bus A (including two on-board gigabit NICs) to the 66MHz. After ordering a 3ware-recommended riser card it works in PCI-X bus B, and now I have 3ware board on one bus and two gigabit NICs on the other one, running at 100MHz.
Be sure to check Tyan and
Re:Consider 3ware... (Score:1)
Of course hardware RAID is "simply better" than software RAID, but are performance differences very noticable?
I mean you are still getting the same benefits right?
In fact, isnt "hardware RAID" just embedded firmware running on the controllers CPU anyway? Surely once the software RAID drivers are loade
Software selection (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm guessing that you are planning on running very large memory applications (> 2 Gig per process), otherwise 64bit support is useless. Especially since _many_ of Linux's applications still have 32bit limitations, even when compiled for 64bit platforms. I've run 64bit linux for 6 or 7 years now, and I'm still pissed that I run into 2Gb file size limits. Remember an int on 64bit linux is still 4 bytes as it is on 32bit systems, so each application has to either use size_t or long to get 64bit integers (which will work on either a 32bit or 64bit machine). Just today I had a user mail me with an error with rcp because it could not transfer a file that was 2.1Gigs. I believe 'cat' has the same limitation, unless it is done as a pipe. For example, cat over_2Gig_file >
Also, Linux has other limitations like it cannot access a block device over 1 or 2 Tb (depending on the kernel version).
I think that the 64bit hype is amusing. I'm not sure, but an amd64 system running int 64bit mode might be slower than a 32bit offering from either intel or amd. You will have to look at the numbers, but they are hard to find. All of the benchmarks for the opteron that I have seen were run on 32bit applications that were complied with the _Intel_ compiler, or sometimes gcc (and then I believe that they were in 32bit mode).
My recommendation is to 1) kill you cat (just kidding), and 2) just by a stock machine that is either 32bits or look for an integrated 64bit system for linux already [penguincomputing.com], or get a really nice 64bit system [apple.com] (but I wouldn't put Linux on one of those).
Re:Software selection (< > missing with cat) (Score:2)
the 1st one took I guess because the < > were unbalanced.
Re:Software selection (Score:5, Informative)
Not at all true! AMD64 has twice the number of general-purpose registers available in 64-bit mode. Some apps also just run faster in 64-bit, like POVray.
Re:Software selection (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Software selection (Score:4, Insightful)
Data please? this thread mentions povray, well this povray benchmark site [haveland.com] clearly shows that the $259 amd64 chip is slower than the $200 Intel offering.
this site [thejemreport.com] has some benchmarks. Note that they use gcc for the pentium machines, which is not a very good optimizing compiler. For floating point apps, I typically see 2x speedup when using the Intel compiler (like oggenc, povray, etc). I cannot say which is faster, but being that there is no good (free) compiler for the amd64 you will just have to take the numbers for what they are (meaningless).
The grandparent is smoking some major crack.
Damn, I've gotta be more discreet.
Re:Software selection (Score:2)
I too would be interested in seeing results from a highly optimized x86_64 compiler.
Re:Software selection (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Software selection (Score:2)
Only if your code and data are cache-bound. If you have large amounts of data c.f. cache size, and your FP code is not in tight loops (e.g. 1000s-10000000s iterations over a few 100 bytes of code) the Opteron's superior memory bandwidth will totally kick everything else's butt.
Re:Software selection (Score:2)
Re:Software selection (Score:1)
Re:Software selection (Score:2)
For what's worth, here are some numbers on performance increase due to extra registers. Mind you, this is just a dumb double multiplication loop.
Re:Software selection (Score:1, Offtopic)
that's better than my mom on meth.
Precisely ... (Score:3, Informative)
The performance increases of 10-20% is precisely what people got by recompiling with gcc for AMD6
non-executable pages (Score:2)
Don't forget the new nonexecutable page flag! It reduces the severity of buffer overflows, which is far from useless in my opinion. (I'm not sure if the processor has to run in 64 bit for it to work, but as far as I know, its only available on the 64 bit chips -- someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
-jim
Re:Software selection (Score:4, Insightful)
First, the Opteron has an integrated memory controller. That means FAST memory access. If you are running two of them on a dual-channel board, you get a really fast NUMA configuration. That's very important for applications that actually need to calculate stuff, assuming your OS supports it.
Second, it has twice the number of registers. That gives you a large performance advantage over IA-32 because apps don't need to constantly swap out variables into RAM.
Third, the Opteron has 1 meg of L2 cache. That is twice than what Athlon 64 or Mac G5 has, for about the same price. It sure as hell makes a difference, even for normal desktop use.
Also, I see no reason whatsoever to buy an expensive pre-built system when a really nice machine can be put together in a few hours for well under $900. I just upgraded my workstation to an Opteron 140 for only about $600. That's with a server-class board, 400W power supply, and 512 megs of DDR400 registered ECC RAM. Apple doesn't even offer the same features, and a comparable machine costs about $2000 from them. Not to mention that OS X is 32-bit.
Re:Software selection (Score:3, Interesting)
bandwidth to hell, right? Don't use registered
unless you need it for SMP.
Re:Software selection (Score:2)
Re:Software selection (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Software selection (Score:2)
Re:Software selection (Score:2)
Re:Software selection (Score:1, Interesting)
The AMD64 architecture has numerous other advantages over 386, besides just the address space.
Computing got corrupted when people started stressing "bits". It was worst in the Wintel world, when people used "32-bit" when they really meant "Win32 API" and "16-bit" when they meant MSDOS or Windows 3.x API. But that's another rant for another time.
Whenever someone ta
platform DOES matter (Score:3, Informative)
Just today I had a user mail me with an error with rcp because it could not transfer a file that was 2.1Gigs.
For example, cat over_2Gig_file > /dev/null will fail
I could see this as being true "6 or 7 years" ago, but any remotely modern linux distribution will NOT have a problem with this, even on 32-bit platforms. Here is a screenshot [astraldream.net] debu
Re:platform DOES matter (Score:2)
I realize that this could be corrected, even on 32bit systems, and that there are applications like tar that have had "large file support" for some time, but on my 64bit systems (alpha) running rh 7.1, this is not true. Upgrading is not really an option for me, and I consider them "remotel
Re:platform DOES matter (Score:2)
The person who submitted this Ask Slashdot question is considering buying a new AMD64 machine. Although I don't mean this in a harsh way, your own personal experience with a 2.5 year old linux distribution is not relevant to the submitter's situation, and you should not be using such experience as a basis for advice to someone in
Search the support databases of linux distributors (Score:3, Informative)
Dyslexia? (Score:5, Funny)
I can just see it:
"So there I was, petting my cup of coffee and drinking my cat..."
SATA with promise chipset works (Score:4, Informative)
Dual opteron just rocks
VIA BIOS problems (Score:3, Informative)
Slackware doesn't come in 64bit :( (Score:1, Informative)
Linux (slackware) runs just fine in 32bit mode. Even faster than the WinXP that came with it.
It's got the Nividia Video/sound chipsets, Broadcom wireless, RTL8139 ethernet, and modem built in. All I have working (the Broadcom needed the Linuxant driver but it's working like a charm).
I haven't tried the modem yet, but I may in the future.
To answer your question, Linux works fine in 32 bit mode on AMD64s. I'll let you know how 64bit Lin
Re:Slackware doesn't come in 64bit :( (Score:2)
In a moment of madness I though about installing bochs on my Athlon set up to emulate AMD64 and see if I could bootstrap a 64-bit Slackware compiled from source...
New Cat (Score:5, Funny)
And a new cat.
Re:New Cat (Score:2, Funny)
Re:New Cat (Score:1)
Train it well in the ways of the
This proprietary driver situation sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
What's more it's really fucking inconvenient and I hate being forced to use lower-quality software because of greed.
I'm sure there are more than a few upset nforce users for example. The ones who aren't upset, wait till they find a bug or find their performance isn't up to par and take their problems to the lkml. They'll find out that since their platform is a black box they can't get any support and are stuck with what they're forced to use.
I was going to buy an nforce3 dual opteron motherboard but I can't stomach having to use a bunch of proprietary drivers.
I also used to think that it was ok if just the video card had a proprietary driver. It's just one driver afterall right? well apparently the slippery slope has slipped. From now on I will refuse to use any drivers which taint the kernel.
On top of all this, I have to really question the legality of all these proprietary drivers that are popping up. I know there were some threads on the lkml about this recently.
Basically they came to the conclusion that if a driver was written for another OS and merely released for linux as an afterthought it was legal. However if it was written for linux it came under a derrivative work and was not legal.
Either way... PROPRIETARY DRIVERS SUCK
Re:This proprietary driver situation sucks (Score:1)
This is mainly because when i recompile the kernel, i might do
make xconfig ; make bzImage ; make modules ; make modules_install ; cp
then configure the kernel in xconfig, then press save and close and it will compile and turn off. my girlfriend might turn on the computer the next day (especially if im not in) and
Re:This proprietary driver situation sucks (Score:2)
Any idea which is the best video card that is well supported in 2D and 3D acceleration with totally Free/Open Source drivers?
I'm still using a Matrox G400, which is OK for now, but eventually I'll want to get something at least a little better.
Don't own one (Score:3, Informative)
however, I think the ATI 9200 series meets your requirements.
The http://dri.sf.net project is the place to get the scoop on fully open source supported 3D cards.
new 64bit hardware sug (Score:1)
there's a neat new box coming out from IWILL [iwill.net] that crams two(2) Opterons in a SFF case.
Unfortunately, if you need something now, this one will be coming too late for you unless you're a
developer/partner/etc:
"IWILL ZMAX based on nVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250Gb chipset will sample in July.
Volume production is planned in September, with a suggested price of $499.
IWILL plans to get attention in workstation market. ZMAXdp
64bit drivers... (Score:1)
major manufacturers appear to be for Windows(ech). ( Here's [gamepc.com] a review that came out today.)
The latest Linux drivers from nvidia aren't too old; their last nForce3 update was in Dec 2003 [nvidia.com] and the gpu drivers in Jan 2004 [nvidia.com]
Tyan [tyan.com] have a page of drivers, as does Highpoint, [highpoint-tech.com] and Adaptec [adaptec.com]
Look into the suse amd64 message boards [suse.com] - they seem to be having some success...
My amd64 linux system (Score:5, Informative)
MSI k8t neo FSIR2 motherboard (some issues with slow bios upgrades)
MSI Geforce FX5950ultra 256MB
Soundblaster Audigy
2 x 120GB ATA4 HDD
1 x 36GB SATA 10k drive
1 x dvd+/-rw CDrw combo
amd64 3200+
1 GB (2 x 512MB) kingston ddr333
This system runs gentoo 2004.1 64bit linux fine. SATA and PATA work fine, but there is not now nor, hopefully, will there ever be support for Software RAID as you find on motherboards (it is pointless feature creep IMHO).
Whilst I would say that ASUS appear to be on the ball with bios updates compared to MSI, my system runs fine (even manages wine using 32bit compatibility libraries and runs windows progs...).
I wholeheartedly recommend 64bit linux and would say that EVERYTHING works except high end ATI radeons (ATI couldn'f find their arsehole with two hands and a roadmap in 64bit terms) and many 802.11g cards (mostly due to the atheros binary driver crap, but support is slowly improving). Couple this with *no* support for software RAID (which is no real use anyway) and you nicely encapsulate most of the problems with 64bit linux. Sure, grub and lilo dont play well at 64 bit, so you will need a liveCD or a chrooted 32bit environment to build them (and some other apps); but 32bit apps execute fine as long as you have a set of 32bit libraries for them to play with.
Go for it, join us, we tools who double as early adopters... then you too can whine at manufacturers for their tardiness in supporting "production ready" 64bit OS'... lol
hope this helps...
err!
jak.
Re:My amd64 linux system (Score:2)
do you think it will work on dual opteron? (I'm thinking about buying dual opteron
Re:My amd64 linux system (Score:1)
I am using a udev based gentoo system, so the kernel module does not properly create the required device nodes, so I had to create them manually (nvidia, if reading, if the drivers were open source, we would fix this embarassingly poor programming for you!).
but the 64bit drivers released by nvidia work
64-bit performance revisited (Score:4, Informative)
And one more thing - do take a look at the Solaris 64-bit Developer's Guide [sun.com]. They have done the migration 32->64 long time ago. Learn from them.
Re:64-bit performance revisited (Score:2)
third party drivers (Score:1)
Nvidia binary drivers aren't "specially supported" (Score:2)
The kernel guys will ignore a system with them installed as well. They taint the kernel too.
Re:Nvidia binary drivers aren't "specially support (Score:1)
Where to buy? (Score:2)
The problem is that The Powers That Be insist on us purchasing the systems from a large vendor (Dell, HP, etc) and, from what I can tell, none of the large established vendors have Athlon64 systems available (HPaq has one, but it's in their 'home line' and not actually sold through their busine
if you need to work now (Score:1)
WD HDDs
Aopen DVDROM/CDRW and DVD+RW
Nvidia FX 5900 Ultra
Redhat WS AMD-64
all's running awesome except I cant get damn palmPilot to sync : (
Been there, seen that, got the t-shirt (Score:2)
I have SuSE 9 with a self compiled 2.6.5 kernel (no ROM drives and broken bits last fixed in 2.6.2-mjb), Gentoo stage 1 build with self-compiled Gentoo 2.6.5 kernel (lotsa missing kernel options) that jus
Tyan K8W (S2885) and two Opteron 242s (Score:2)
I run gentoo, and I would recommend that anyone useing linux on an AMD64 platform do so. I used SuSE 9.0 for AMD64 for a f