Pros and Cons of amd64 (versus i386).

[Nikolas Britton]

Hello all,

I will be getting my very first 64-bit x86 system tomorrow and I don't
know anything about the platform at the software level. The last time
I touched an AMD based system was in the socket 7 days.

HELP!, what do I do with the extra 32-bits of CPU goodness? :-)

$200 bucks got me a Athlon 64 3000+ Venice and a ASUS A8V Motherboard.
I'll be converting my Pentium 4 2.26GHz desktop system that has
FreeBSD 6.1-PRERELEASE i386 on it, gcc is currently set to build with
-march=pentium2 and -mtune=pentium4 via make.conf

* How do I buildworld to amd64, and should I?
* What are the best gcc -mtune / -march flags to use?
* What do all the other -m flags do?
* What -march flags won't run on the AMD platform, will CPUTYPE=p2 work on AMD?
* Can I still build packages for other i386 (non 64-bit) systems?
* Where can I find more info about FreeBSD on AMD?
* What did I forget to add here?

Thanks guys.




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