# Upgrading to AMD64, are there compatability issues w/ Gentoo

## enigma_0Z

I'm thinking about upgrading to an AMD64 architechure w/ PCI Express, are there any compatability concerns I should know about? Any problems with PCI-E & nVidia video cards? What about AMD64 & software in portage. I've heard of some problems with GRUB, are these resolved? Thanks.

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## elvisthedj

There are lots of threads about this.  I've been on 64 for several months and the biggest issues are browser plugins (mainly flash) and mplayer codecs (mainly the windows codecs) .. Both solved by using 32 bit binaries.   I use grub and have never had an issue with it. 

Not sure about the pci express.  Don't have it.  Normal nvidia drivers work fine though.

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## feminista

I have an AMD64 3500+ and a Geforce 6600, both work perfectly.  The only architecture-related problems I have run in to, are, as mentioned, flash and media player plugins, which work fine with the 32 binary version of firefox in portage.  (Well, actually, my mplayer plugin won't display video, but I think that's just incorrectly installed codecs.  It lets me download and view in vlc, which is enough).  My other problem is that winex/cedega-cvs won't compile, although some people have been able to fix this with altered CFLAGs and such.  Again, binaries work fine.

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## H4wk

the only thing you'll notice is that packages will be marked unstable for a bit longer, because less people are on 64 bit. Though its not really a problem.

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## enigma_0Z

 *feminista wrote:*   

> I have an AMD64 3500+ and a Geforce 6600...

 

Is the Geforce 6600 a PCI Express or AGP? Is it afflicted with driver issues? Does it run at full speed, etc?

 *H4wk wrote:*   

> the only thing you'll notice is that packages will be marked unstable for a bit longer, because less people are on 64 bit. Though its not really a problem.

 

Well, perhaps I could become a package tester!! Almost every package that I use that's marked ~x86 is stable anyways... heh.

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## feminista

 *Quote:*   

> Is the Geforce 6600 a PCI Express or AGP? Is it afflicted with driver issues? Does it run at full speed, etc? 

 

PCI-e.  nv drivers work fine, but slow; binary nvidia drivers work great (3500-4000 fps glxgears).  Haven't had a single problem, and I've played fully 3D games under cedega (nothing recent, mind you).  I even have compositing working, although it conflicts with some GLX stuff, so I have to turn it off when I run OpenGL apps.

And also, it's true about more stuff being ~arch masked, but most of it works fine, often better.  I only use ~arch when I have to, and that's worked out fine for me.  Only ever crashed my system twice, once ejecting my ipod (which isn't really necessary), and once combining GLX and compositing.

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## drescherjm

 *Quote:*   

> I use grub and have never had an issue with it. 

 

There is only one issue I have had with grub but I bet it will not happen to you anytime soon. There is a bug in grub that if you have over 2GB of memory it uses a signed 32 bit integer so it thinks the kernel is too big to fit in the memory space that you have and terminates. BTW, I have a simple patch for this one...

 *Quote:*   

> ~arch masked, but most of it works fine, often better. 

 

Exactly. I am not sure if it is even possible to have an amd64 system with out some ~arch packages. And I have found when things do not compile or work as they should a lot of times moving to the ~arch package fixes the problem.

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## enigma_0Z

What about the onboard audio & ethernet, does gentoo support it? The audio is AC97 audio and the ethernet, I don't know, but the motherboard is an ABit AX8

Are there any concerns people have had with VIA chipsets & ABit motherboards? I have an old one with the VIA KT133 chipset and it had alot of issues...

 *feminista wrote:*   

> PCI-e.  nv drivers work fine, but slow; binary nvidia drivers work great (3500-4000 fps glxgears).

 

You mean by "nv" drivers, the ones built into xorg & the kernel, right? And the binary drivers are the ones you get from portage (emerge -v nvidia-drivers) right?

 *drescherjm wrote:*   

> There is a bug in grub that if you have over 2GB of memory...

 

What about if you have exactally 2 GB of memory... would grub work with the patch even if you didn't have > 2GB?

Also Could I have windows be 32 bit & have linux be 64 bit with out any problems? Could I boot windows into AMD64's 32 bit mode and still have all the 64 bit mode advantages in linux??

Also also would gentoo compile faster with a 64-bit processor? And would those programs compiled with 64-bit gcc be automatically 64 bit and able to take advantage of some or all of the 64-bit enhancements?

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## drescherjm

 *Quote:*   

> What about if you have exactally 2 GB of memory

 

I believe it works fine as I did have one server running with 2 GB for a few weeks.

 *Quote:*   

> Could I have windows be 32 bit & have linux be 64 bit with out any problems?

 

In 64 bit mode with multilib enabled (this is now the default) you can compile and run programs in either 64 or 32 bit while the operating system runs in 64 bit mode. I do this with all my installs.

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## elvisthedj

Maybe this is just me, but one thing I have (which might just be my abit board) is problems with the forcedeth drivers for the onboard ethernet.  The nic will sporadically cease to work, flashing it's amber light on/off every second.  When this happens, I not only have to shutdown, but also have to completely remove the power cable until everything has discharged (about 3 seconds) and then reboot.  I couldn't find a fix, so I just stopped using the onboard until something changes.

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## enigma_0Z

What abit board do you have? Is it the AX8 b/c Internet/ethernet access is VERY important for me...

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## JSharku

 *enigma_0Z wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Also Could I have windows be 32 bit & have linux be 64 bit with out any problems? Could I boot windows into AMD64's 32 bit mode and still have all the 64 bit mode advantages in linux??

 

32 bit Windows works fine on an AMD64, though you'll need the drivers for your AMD64, which you can get from the AMD site. At least I think you need 'em: my laptop came with XP pre-installed and it has a driver for the AMD64 in the recovery partition, I haven't actually done a install-from-scratch yet.

 *Quote:*   

> Also also would gentoo compile faster with a 64-bit processor? And would those programs compiled with 64-bit gcc be automatically 64 bit and able to take advantage of some or all of the 64-bit enhancements?

 Provided you have the right CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" and CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 ...." and you start from stage1 (don't know if there are any AMD64 specific stage2-3's), you should have a full 64 bit only system. Haven't done any benchmarking towards compile times, but they "feel" snappy.

Sharku

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## enigma_0Z

WOW! Thanks for all your help so far!

Now, as I understand it, Nvidia's binary drivers have no qualms with a PCI-E card, right? what about firewire support in linux? Could I use my IEEE 1394 ports as well as my USB 2.0 ports? Is AC97 Audio supported by ALSA? Does anyone recommend a different architechure over AMD64? thanks.

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## eagle_cz

Watch out. If you are about to lunch server on 64bit platform, you should realize, that you will need double memory to be able to run same services.

Anyway i have AMD64 + ATIx700 for year or so and it runs pretty well. PCIe is support by 2.6 kernels, i had no any single problem

with opengl or graphics. Grub is fine.

I found some problem with TeamSpeak, butit can be solved if you run it in emulation mode (since TS is probably just 32bit binary i think)

I also have some odd problem with fonts in several aplications. But im not sure if is it realted to 64 bit or not. It dont bother me much.

Issue is, that when you point mouse on some line in menu, it should be lighted up, but instead text disapper and you dont know whats under pointer  :Smile: 

But its related only to some applications like OO, Thunderbird..

Video is running fine, sound is running fine.

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## enigma_0Z

 *eagle_cz wrote:*   

> Watch out. If you are about to launch server on 64bit platform, you should realize, that you will need double memory to be able to run same services.

 

Does that apply to apps as well? Will OpenOffice take up double ram on my 64 bit system, compared to my 32 bit system?

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## Aysen

A little off topic, but...

 *eagle_cz wrote:*   

> I also have some odd problem with fonts in several aplications. But im not sure if is it realted to 64 bit or not. It dont bother me much.
> 
> Issue is, that when you point mouse on some line in menu, it should be lighted up, but instead text disapper and you dont know whats under pointer 
> 
> But its related only to some applications like OO, Thunderbird..

 

Do you happen to use KDE? If so, you might like to emerge x11-themes/gtk-engines-qt and set GTK to use your QT styles and fonts (by running "kcmshell kcmgtk" if I recall properly) - if you aren't already using it, that could fix your problem.

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## Shan

 *eagle_cz wrote:*   

> Watch out. If you are about to lunch server on 64bit platform, you should realize, that you will need double memory to be able to run same services.

 

Uh...what the hell are you talking about?  I'm no expert, and have only been running amd64 for a few weeks now but theres absolutley nothing in my experiance that would verify this.  In fact, it more sounds like you weren't paying attention to your motherboards manual when it told you the sequence you install memory modules when using a Dual Channel setup.

As for your initial questions enigma_0Z, provided you don't occasionally mind having to poke at your system to get it to work (opposed to it Just Works(TM)) then you shouldn't have too much in the way of problems.  I use an MSI K8N Platinum motherboard (nForce4), Athlon-64 3500+ (2.2Ghz) with a GeForce 6600 GT (PCI-E) with no problems.  I've never experienced issues with the onboard gigabit ethernet (using the forcedeth driver); and performance as a whole is a lot snappier than my older Athlon 3200+; despite the actual speed being virtually identical (within a couple dozen Mhz).

As for OpenOffice, AMD64 compatability didn't seem to make it in for the 2.0RC's; so for the time being you'll have to use the availabler binary's.  Most everything else seems to compile fine in 64bit mode (excluding the afformentioned flash and win32 codecs)

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## drescherjm

 *Quote:*   

> Uh...what the hell are you talking about? I'm no expert, and have only been running amd64 for a few weeks now but theres absolutley nothing in my experiance that would verify this.

 

Agreed. There is absolutely no need to double your memory just because the pointers are now 64 bits. The overhead is minimal. I have had amd64 servers with 512MB but now 2 or 4 gig is the norm since corsair 2GB pc3200 reg ecc dual channel memory is around $330US.

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## otake-tux

How hard is it to get the win32 codecs to work on 64 bit gentoo?

I'm thinking about switching to gentoo again because I have heard its the best OS for 64 bit linux.  However, win32 codecs are important for me so; how hard is it to do?

also , I have an acer aspire 5004wlmi. Any had experiences with gentoo and this laptop?

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## Shan

 *otake-tux wrote:*   

> How hard is it to get the win32 codecs to work on 64 bit gentoo?
> 
> I'm thinking about switching to gentoo again because I have heard its the best OS for 64 bit linux.  However, win32 codecs are important for me so; how hard is it to do?

 

There are plenty of guides and such about now giving thorough instructions; but it basically boils down to using a binary media player with the win32 codecs; which while not ideal, seems to work.  Xine is my preferred media-player (DVD Menu's mostly); so I use that normally, but when I need to hit up a streamed movie or such its mplayer-bin.  Eventually this wont be an issue; but its forever in "tomorrow" until 64-bit compiled codecs are released.

 *Quote:*   

> also , I have an acer aspire 5004wlmi. Any had experiences with gentoo and this laptop?

 

Couldn't tell you for sure, but if you find it works with other distro's it's pretty likely to work with Gentoo as well.

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