# Should I go 64?

## mattjgalloway

Simple question really: "Should I invest in a 64-bit PC?"

Has anyone got any advice on mobos, CPU types (I prefer AMD, but what's Intel like?), DDR2, PCI Express, etc?

I'd like to hear people's thoughts before I plunge £300 into it!

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## jjasghar

i'm thinking about it too, but see i have a delema too.  If i'm going 64bit i feel that gentoo is too bloated for me.  i want the most out of my machine if i can, so i'd like to use a minimalist distro with it.  it might be harder to set up but think about the speed that it would be running. i use crux right now and never been happier. problem with crux though is that it's optimized for the i686 not a 64bit processor, any advice? 

mattjgalloway: i feel that this is relevant, being that if you do want to drop 300 pounds into something you should think of all the possiblites.

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## mattjgalloway

Yeh, that's cool - no worries - you're in the same problem as me and all advice here is good advice!

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## butters

I hardly consider gentoo bloatware.  The only cruft that develops is in /usr/portage/distfiles and /var/tmp/portage.  The only stuff in gentoo that isn't in every other distro is the development tools (gcc, python, bison gawk, etc).  IMHO have these around is a good thing anyway.

As far as I know, Gentoo has better support for AMD64 than just about any other distro.  Only SUSE seems to come close.  Fedora Core 2 still has many rough edges.

A quick survey of anandtech.com or similar sites shows how Athlon64's compare to other available options.  Basically, the $172 (shipped, retail, newegg) Athlon64 3000+ edges out the fastest P4's including the Extreme Edition in most benchmarks.  Even Dell is looking the way of AMD, and they've been more loyal to Intel than anyone.

The 3000+ is the sweet spot within the Athlon64 line.  Don't bother with the new Socket 939 Athlon64's, they're still way too expensive to justify the small benefits of dual channel memory.  Unlike the P4's NetBurst architecture, the Athlon64 just isn't that memory-bottlenecked.  Mostly this is attributable to the shorter pipeline and on-die memory controller.

For motherboards, there is no better than the MSI K8N Neo Platinum, which costs about $130.  Comes with all the bells and whistles of nForce3 250 (gigabit LAN, 8 channel sound, 4x SATA RAID 0/1/0+1), plus 3 DDR400 DIMM slots, 3x Firewire, 8x USB 2.0, you get the point.  The main reason I like this board, though, is due to the superior layout, with the memory slots placed horizontal above the CPU socket and the ATX power on the right edge.  BIOS is good too, which a working PCI/AGP lock and tons of overclocking goodies.

PCI express is overrated as well.  Besides the glitches Intel is having with their PCIe chipsets, there simply isn't any need right now for the extra bus bandwidth.  If the bandwidth was necessary, then ATI/NVIDIA wouldn't be able to release their new flagship cards in both AGP and PCIe formats: they would need to clock the AGP version slower.  Maybe 1-2 years down the line there will be cards out that need PCIe, but if the NVIDIA SLI rumors are true, we will see chained video cards (like the voodoo2 of old) before the AGP 8x bus gets saturated.

DDR2 is another disappointment.  In most cases you can get better performance from overclocking your memory bus with DDR500 memory than you can get with DDR2 at 500MHz.  This is because of all the tuning that has gone into the mature DDR memory controllers.  Also, the Athlon64 processors do not support DDR2, and as mentioned before, they hold a strong lead over more expensive Intel offerings.

I just priced a system like this:

Athlon64 3000+, 1GB low-latency DDR400, MSI K8N Neo Platinum, GeForce FX5500 (128 MB/128-bit DDR), 80GB SATA 7200RPM/8MB HD, DVD/CDRW combo, Nice case with 350W PSU and 72W 5.1 speaker set.

All this came to $837 shipped (USD).

I think I'm gunna put this together when I get back to school, you can't beat this system for the price.  The most expensive component (by far) was the memory, which cost $238 (2x 512MB OCZ Enhanced Latency DDR400 with the gold plated heat spreaders, with 2-3-2-6-1T timing).

Good luck!!

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## jjasghar

 *butters wrote:*   

> ...Athlon64 3000+, 1GB low-latency DDR400, MSI K8N Neo Platinum, GeForce FX5500 (128 MB/128-bit DDR), 80GB SATA 7200RPM/8MB HD, DVD/CDRW combo, Nice case with 350W PSU and 72W 5.1 speaker set.
> 
> All this came to $837 shipped (USD).
> 
> I think I'm gunna put this together when I get back to school, you can't beat this system for the price.  Good luck!!....

 

that's freaking crazy man. you sold me on that price. you priced that at new egg right?

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## John5788

im going to go 64bit once it hits mainstream on windows. i don't really want to be ahead of everyone and i don't want to be behind. so I made my last socket 478 p4 upgrade and the next im looking forward to is either a LGA775 or an AMD 64.

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## butters

yeah, all on newegg.  The case is only has a 300W PSU, now that I checked back at the wish list, but that's fine for this system.  As you can see I'm not really a gamer (GeForce FX5500 isn't exactly a speed demon anymore, but its solid and definately the best bang for the buck at $73 with DVI).  Newegg has the CG stepping (overclocks much better) of the Athlon64 3000+ on sale right now for $1 more than the older stepping, so I included that as well.

As they say, it'll certainly get the job done (stage1 install in less than 2 hours maybe?).

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## butters

Well, you know, we can blame years of gaping security problems and the massive undertaking that SP2 must have been for the delay of WinXP 64-bit.  On the plus side, I'm running SP2 on my Windows box (yes, I admit I have a windows box), and its much better than the cynical tech review sites warned.  The Windows Firewall gave me one warning to unblock NDPS print services and another to unblock PCAnywhere.  Even IE has a popup blocker now, but thats no reason not to use Firefox on Windows (no tabs in IE, though).

Windows XP 64-bit can be delayed to around May of next year now!!

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## torchZ06

i agree with butters-- AMD64 systems compile stuff like nobody's business!

i built a solid P4 3.2Northwood system back in november and a opteron150 box last month and there's no comparison.  the opteron chews thru code voraciously!

both boxes use 1GB of LL DDR400 (Mushkin 3500 level2 for the P4, and the OCZ stuff butters recommended for the AMD)

and while i don't really like posting benchmarks, there's a pretty sizable margin on these:

from anandtech...

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2002&p=10

wouldn't let me insert the image??  from x-bit...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/athlon64-fx53/cpp-2.png

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/athlon64-fx53/cpp-1.png

the only problems i've had is lack of flash in firefox and win32 codecs for xine n mplayer n stuff, but other than that the machine is a dream.

so much so i'm putting the P4 up for sale on ebay!

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## syadnom

deffinitely go 64bit.  not only do you get better compile times, but you get on-die memory controller so slower ram performs well.  you dont need DDR400 to get good performance with A64s.

the only issues you might have are the flash plugins are 32bit, and so are a number of codecs.  BUT if you compile firefox and xine/mplayer 32bit for athlonXP then you can still use these plugins, and 64bittyness isn't so necessary for firefox or xine/mplayer

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## mattjgalloway

Ah some nice tips there!

I might give it a while before I upgrade - although my Athlon XP 2000+ is starting to be sluggish! It's not bad - much faster in gentoo than windows, but I can't compile, watch a dvd, use vmware AND do my work all at the same time! Lol!

I'll go 64-bit fairly soon I think, but not tomorrow.

So is AMD64 good to go for then we think? What mobo though? I normally use Giga-Byte because I always have and they always work. I hesitate with VIA chipset because I've seen problems with it before... BUT that was in Windows... I guess Linux support is better!

nForce3 isn't supported in Linux yet is it?

Which VIA chipset is best? I've noticed K8M800 and K8T800 - much difference?

Other reason for not going 64-bit QUITE yet is that I really need to figure out how I'm gonna backup all my stuff to then reinstall. Any tips on that one? What would I need to backup from my current Gentoo install? My /home/ files are on another harddrive, so that's ok. Is there much point saving things or is it easy enough to get it all back? I'd save my karamba stuff and backdrops of course...

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## John5788

 *mattjgalloway wrote:*   

> Other reason for not going 64-bit QUITE yet is that I really need to figure out how I'm gonna backup all my stuff to then reinstall. Any tips on that one? What would I need to backup from my current Gentoo install? My /home/ files are on another harddrive, so that's ok. Is there much point saving things or is it easy enough to get it all back? I'd save my karamba stuff and backdrops of course...

 

why dont u just move the harddrive to the new machine?

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## nuzzy

I was looking at the FX-53 chip with the Asus SK8V board...you get $50 off at newegg if you buy that combo right now...

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## mattjgalloway

Surely I'd need to reinstall gentoo though on 64-bit... Well, at least I'd want to.

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## torchZ06

nuzzy,

just a thought, but if you're not planning to overclock you might do what i did and pick up an opteron150-- it's the same chip as the 53 save for the locked multiplier and it's $614 compared to $830.

i wouldn't worry about it being socket 940 instead of 939 since they're going to be supporting that pin package with future opterons.

everyone on the PC side knocks 940 cause of the registered memory requirement, but on a *nix box, registered and hell even  registered ecc memory is a good thing

just a thought...

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## Corona688

The problem with registered memory isn't that registered memory's a bad thing, inasmuch as you can't exactly walk into your local computer shop and get more registered ram.  Certainly not where I am, at least.

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## torchZ06

 *Corona688 wrote:*   

> The problem with registered memory isn't that registered memory's a bad thing, inasmuch as you can't exactly walk into your local computer shop and get more registered ram.  Certainly not where I am, at least.

 

wow you shop at a local place for cpu stuff?  you must have deep pockets or maybe where you live the markup isn't 10000%.  i'm all for supporting local businesses, but everywhere i've ever lived the local places practically ask you to bend over when it comes to what they charge for stuff.

in this day and age with the advent of pricewatch and newegg, i doubt there's many people who shop at the good ole corner computer store anymore.... at least not anybody that knows whats up.

and i've never heard anybody complain about availability-- it's always but i'll lose a cycle here or but it's too expensive

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