Another whirl with FreeBSD

[Pete French]

> Doesn't the increased number of registers available when running amd64
> really, really help when compared with the traditionally register-starved
> i386?

Yes, it seems to -  evereything soemone else said about context switch
verhead and compiles is true of course, but the FreeBSD compiler seems to
be able to take advantgae of those registers, and everything I have measured
on my home box has come out faster, if only by a few percentage points.
But the only way for any particular users workload is to try it for
themselves.

Personally I think everything will end up 64 bit, so am just making
the move now for the hell of it. Moved the Windows boxes first as they
are expendable (though actually XP x64 is a lot more stable than the
original XP pro I was running) and then moved the BSD machines over a
few months later after doing a lot of testing. Have no regrets whatsoever.

-pete.