# about AMD CPU

## accelas

I plan to buy a new computer recently. I heard that AMD CPU based system has some serious flaw; as a result, those boxes are really easy to crash. Is that true?

BTW, what is the "Linux Standard Base"? is it important? if so, is gentoo compatible with it?

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## El_Presidente_Pufferfish

Lies, lies i tell you!

(i dont know about the Linux Standard Base)

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## pjp

Will Gentoo be LSB certified? should cover your LSB question.

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## rac

 *accelas wrote:*   

> I heard that AMD CPU based system has some serious flaw; as a result, those boxes are really easy to crash. Is that true?

 

Is there an online resource that we can read to check on the specific issue you're referring to?  I have heard no such rumor.

EDIT: maybe you are referring to the AGP cache coherency issue described by drobbins.  If so, there has probably been some more work by kernel developers to work around the problem, but I haven't really been following developments closely.  There used to be a link to a discussion of this issue on gentoo.org - the fact that said link is no longer prominently displayed hints to me that the problem has been dealt with.

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## therion12

You heard wrong!  :Smile: 

If set-up correctly, they are just as bulletproof as intel processors, maybe more. I think there's alot more issues with the chipsets having flaws than the processor itself... but i'd be interested if you could find an article on this 'flaw' becuase i doubt it exists and that guy is probably BSing you into buying a Intelicrap. (No pun intended)

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## Lovechild

The AGP problem has not been fixed to my knowlegde - it only affects a small amount of AMD chips however and it's quite simple to workaround.. The biggest problem with AMD CPUs (all newer CPUs really) is their heat output, thus the amount of cooling they need. Noise is a big factor with me, it makes me go crazy.

LSB, it would be nice - and since the LSB doesn't require the distro to be fueled by RPM (why some people believe this I don't know, must be like the QT freedom issue)** - There might be some infrastructural changes to Gentoo in order to meet the LSB standard. I would consider it important to create a strong standard, but as far as Gentoo goes I don't think we'll be LSB compliant anytime soon (if ever 100%) - it seems it's simply not on the todo list right now, getting much needed features into portage and transferring 100% to GCC3 seems to be more important right now.

**

The LSB has from the beginning stated that rpms was the norm, but any distro is free to use it's own package management system - remember the Debian developers have a quite few members involved with LSB outlining, they would NEVER agree to make RPMs a forced standard.

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## pjp

 *Lovechild wrote:*   

> LSB, it would be nice - and since the LSB doesn't require the distro to be fueled by RPM (why some people believe this I don't know, must be like the QT freedom issue)** - 

 Probably the part where it states: *Quote:*   

> Package Format
> 
> Applications should be provided in the RPM packaging format as defined in the appendix of the 1997 edition of Maximum RPM, with some restrictions listed below. [1]
> 
> [1]  Some versions of RPM may produce packages which contain extensions or modifications to the RPM package format beyond what has been documented in the appendix of the Maximum RPM book. An LSB-conformant package must not contain any of these extensions, in order to assure interoperability with the largest number of versions of RPM and packaging systems which understand how to import RPM format packages.

 

Chapter 14. Software Installation

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## Cid Highwind

 *Lovechild wrote:*   

> The AGP problem has not been fixed to my knowlegde - it only affects a small amount of AMD chips however and it's quite simple to workaround.. 

 

Do tell!

I have one of the dreaded Athlon + Via KX133 + Nvidia AGP setups that crashes almost daily.  How can I work around this issue?

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## hitman200ca

 *Lovechild wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ... 
> 
> - it seems it's simply not on the todo list right now, getting much needed features into portage and transferring 100% to GCC3 seems to be more important right now. 
> ...

 

I'm curious about this whole GCC 2/3 thing and since this is the Newbie Forum I thought I would ask for the good of all those n00b's like me who are out of the loop.

So what's up ?  Why is it necessary to do as Lovechild metioned above.  Is this a distro wide thing or is it the packages that have problems with one or the other ?

I noticed the other day that RedHat is still using the GCC2.xx in thier systems.  Is this bad (or lazy) of them?  Are there nice new features in GCC3 that make migrating to it worth while (assuming some sort of migration is necessary and non-trivial)?  Are compiled code incompatible if compiled on one or the other version?

Let me have it  !!

If this is a dumb question because X or Y then I want to know.

It good to be a n00b in a supportive environment  :o)

Thanks to Linux and n00b support I learned how make works and about the awsome and life saving powers of cvs.  

There is always a little drool that slips out when I sit down to my router/firewall/cablesharer/devel eviron/.../etc.

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## therion12

I'm kindof a n00b myself, but gcc-2.95 compiled apps will not work in gcc-3.2.

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## Lovechild

 *kanuslupus wrote:*   

>  *Lovechild wrote:*   LSB, it would be nice - and since the LSB doesn't require the distro to be fueled by RPM (why some people believe this I don't know, must be like the QT freedom issue)** -  Probably the part where it states: *Quote:*   Package Format
> 
> Applications should be provided in the RPM packaging format as defined in the appendix of the 1997 edition of Maximum RPM, with some restrictions listed below. [1]
> 
> [1]  Some versions of RPM may produce packages which contain extensions or modifications to the RPM package format beyond what has been documented in the appendix of the Maximum RPM book. An LSB-conformant package must not contain any of these extensions, in order to assure interoperability with the largest number of versions of RPM and packaging systems which understand how to import RPM format packages. 
> ...

 

Read the entire thing

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> [2]
> 
> The distribution itself may use a different packaging format for its own packages, and of course it may use any available mechanism for installing the LSB-conformant packages.
> ...

 

So Gentoo just has to be able to install rpm package and we're good - we can do that - sorta, we have rpm avail. in portage and all it would really take is a wrapper/conversion program like alien(Debian). I could be mistaken however.

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## Lovechild

 *Cid Highwind wrote:*   

>  *Lovechild wrote:*   The AGP problem has not been fixed to my knowlegde - it only affects a small amount of AMD chips however and it's quite simple to workaround..  
> 
> Do tell!
> 
> I have one of the dreaded Athlon + Via KX133 + Nvidia AGP setups that crashes almost daily.  How can I work around this issue?

 

Set mem=nopentium in your bootloader, like this in grub:

```

title=Development Kernel(2.5.42-ac1)

root(hd0,0)

kernel /boot/dev root=/dev/hdb1 hdd=ide-scsi mem=nopentium

```

In like 90% of the cases I've seen, this fixed the problem.

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## Lovechild

 *hitman200ca wrote:*   

> 
> 
> I'm curious about this whole GCC 2/3 thing and since this is the Newbie Forum I thought I would ask for the good of all those n00b's like me who are out of the loop.
> 
> So what's up ?  Why is it necessary to do as Lovechild metioned above.  Is this a distro wide thing or is it the packages that have problems with one or the other ?
> ...

 

GCC is going to be the default compiler for 1.4, because it's the first GCC compiler to implement a C++ ABI sanely. The main problem is GCC3 is incompatible with GCC2 compiled programs - meaning that things like Java and flash will not work with a GCC3 compiled browser. The reason of course is that the vendors doesn't provide source code for us to compile our own, thus we need to wait for the vendors to provide us with a proper version... (that means we're screwed)

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> I noticed the other day that RedHat is still using the GCC2.xx in thier systems.  Is this bad (or lazy) of them?  Are there nice new features in GCC3 that make migrating to it worth while (assuming some sort of migration is necessary and non-trivial)?  Are compiled code incompatible if compiled on one or the other version?
> 
> Let me have it  !!
> ...

 

Redhat's lastest release 8.0 should be based on GCC3.2-CVS AFAIK - they might be providing static GCC2 libs for java and flash to link against.

Of course the most important feature in GCC3 for the General Gentoo crowd ------ much faster code is generated by this release, the numbers seem to go from a 10% to a 50% speed increase (we like that... don't we)

Another thing holding a full GCC3 release down is some quite serious optimization bugs in the current release - GCC3 is known to miscompile code at -march=i686 and beyond. This might not matter much to RedHat and Mandrake (both have GCC3 releases out now), since they down optimize their code much. RedHat releases i386 compiled code and Mandrake never goes above i585... but this is a serious issue for Gentoo - as we're as a general rule...... optimization crazy....

Expect the compile bugs to be fixed in the next release of GCC 3.2.1 which is slated for release..... today... so they are late, what a surprise. The needed fixes ARE in CVS now, so it's the simple task of upgrading GCC (HA - remember the last time?)

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## arkane

 *Lovechild wrote:*   

> 
> 
> So Gentoo just has to be able to install rpm package and we're good - we can do that - sorta, we have rpm avail. in portage and all it would really take is a wrapper/conversion program like alien(Debian). I could be mistaken however.

 

As it stands now, we even have a few RPM-based apps in our portage distfiles.  RealAudio is one, but I can't think of any others right off hand.  (I have installed others, but they just won't come to mind right now)

Though in my mind it's a bit of a hack... it is possible though!  It's extracted with a one-liner:  

"rpm2cpio ${DISTDIR}/${A} | cpio -i --make-directories"

I've been trying myself to get OEOne installed, but they have everything in some massive RPM hell type of setup. (like, 11 or 12 RPMs, each having dependancies which I'm not sure how to detect)

Alright, this is going a bit offtopic I would imagine heh...

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## hitman200ca

Wow !!!

Major points for Lovechild !!

Thanks so much for the info :o)

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## NU-Slacker

I had found out about those stability issues first hand when I had my Thunderbird.  It would crash consistently every 2 days.  However, I have since upgraded to an XP1800 (after a small accident with a rather heavy heatsink and my t-bird's core) and I have been getting excellent stability (not to mention nice gcc performance).  I think that there have actually been patches to the 2.4.19 kernel to address the source of the instability with the AMD processors, at least thats the word on the street  :Smile: , and worst case you can mem=nopentium the kernel.

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## aardvark

About the "Athlon stability" issue:

From the NVIDIA-glx (latest) readme file

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
>   o Support for the processor's Page Size Extension on Athlon Processors
> 
>     Some linux kernels have a conflicting cache attribute bug that is
> ...

 

that should cover it.....

Nvidia fixed it for us?!

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## NU-Slacker

 *Quote:*   

> Nvidia fixed it for us?!

 

Sorta  :Smile: ... the problem was an interaction between the cpu's cache and what the system (agp bus in particular) thought was in the cache.  Apparently it was a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing until suddenly your agp bus has written over operating system code in the cache with random values... generally not a good thing for system stability  :Smile: .

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## iancurtis

i got an amd xp 1800+ and i'm running flawless.

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## Lovechild

 *aardvark wrote:*   

> that should cover it.....
> 
> Nvidia fixed it for us?!

 

nVidia certainly didn't FIX anything - I remember when the AMD / nVidia stability ussue first was discovered, nVidia made all and any effort to show that everyone who had this problem had a broken AGP port and that one but the user was to blame - they even stated a "test" that nearly setups were support to fail, some x11perf thing, but I NEVER saw a machine that didn't pass that lousy sucka.

-edit-

Anyone remember which distro developer was instrumental in bringing this news to the public... oh yes, our very own Daniel Robbins of Gentoo Technologies.

nVidia..   :Rolling Eyes:   :Rolling Eyes: 

Gentoo   :Cool:   :Cool: 

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## pjp

 *Quote:*   

> Applications should be provided in the RPM packaging format as defined in the appendix of the 1997 edition of Maximum RPM, with some restrictions listed below.

 

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