more than 4gb of RAM (configurations)

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

On Feb 19, 2008 5:10 PM, Kevin K <kkutzko at teksavvy.com> wrote:

> I have a box that we recently installed 16GB of RAM on. The box is i386
> FreeBSD 6.2. It only recognizes 4gb.


Siding with most of the group (go amd64), I'll add my own comment:

Using PAE to access 4G of  RAM  (because 4G shows up as 2.5 to 3.5 gig,
depending on the motherboard) under i386 is a reasonable solution, IMHO.
Maybe even 6 gig or 8 gig... if you're trying to extend the life of an ia32
server.

But with amd64 supporting ia32 binaries well, it seems the only reason left
might be drivers --- except ... are there _any_ drivers that support PAE and
_not_ amd64?

I'm using amd64 on my laptop (which has 4gig) because the only driver I care
about (the nvidia binary driver) doesn't work under either PAE or amd64 (and
... it also doesn't support 8xxx series mobile chipsets ... so I'm screwed
anyways)
.
I'd be curious to know if anyone's still hedging their bets by making their
machine dual-boot i386/amd64 --- and how they configure it.  Have you
thought about sharing /usr or parts of it?  Installed ports can seemingly
mess things up.