FreeBSD 8.0 amd64 on Nehelem Xeon?

Nerius Landys nlandys at gmail.com
Fri Jan 22 23:24:19 UTC 2010


I'm in the process of purchasing a small Nehelem-based server (Xeon
L5506 CPU to be exact).  I will be installing some flavor of FreeBSD
8.0 (either i386 32 bit or amd64 64 bit, to be exact).  I have no
immediate need for a 64 bit server, as none of the processes that I
will be running in the forseeable future will require more than 3 gigs
of memory.  My primary use for the server (which will be in a data
center) will be to run video games servers; the exact game I'll be
running is based on the ioquake3 open source engine, which compiles
and runs fine on FreeBSD, at least 32 bit (have not tried 64 bit
FreeBSD yet, but will get around to that).

My two concerns when making a decision between 32 bit and 64 bit are:

1. Performance.  Will there be any difference in performance between a
64 bit OS and 32 bit on my Nehelem?

2. Availability of software.  Will some software run only on 32 bit?
Only on 64 bit?

Please help me in making this decision.


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