Hi everyone. I just bought a new box with an AMD XP 2200 processor.YOU pulled down a big patch last night and I now have k_athlon-2.4.20-100. Is this correct for 8.2? Also, what's the difference between the Intel and the AMD kernel anyway? All the google articles with any content seem to be in German. Thanks Steve.
On Monday 22 September 2003 16.36, fsanta wrote:
Hi everyone. I just bought a new box with an AMD XP 2200 processor.YOU pulled down a big patch last night and I now have k_athlon-2.4.20-100. Is this correct for 8.2?
Yes
Also, what's the difference between the Intel and the AMD kernel anyway?
The compiler options used to build it. The athlon kernel is built with optimisations specific for the athlon instruction set, and the default kernel is built with a generic pentium instruction set that all processors can handle.
On Monday 22 September 2003 16:47, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Monday 22 September 2003 16.36, fsanta wrote:
Hi everyone. I just bought a new box with an AMD XP 2200 processor.YOU pulled down a big patch last night and I now have k_athlon-2.4.20-100. Is this correct for 8.2?
Yes
Also, what's the difference between the Intel and the AMD kernel anyway?
The compiler options used to build it. The athlon kernel is built with optimisations specific for the athlon instruction set, and the default kernel is built with a generic pentium instruction set that all processors can handle.
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve.
On Monday 22 September 2003 16:47, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Monday 22 September 2003 16.36, fsanta wrote:
Hi everyone. I just bought a new box with an AMD XP 2200 processor.YOU pulled down a big patch last night and I now have k_athlon-2.4.20-100. Is this correct for 8.2?
Yes
Also, what's the difference between the Intel and the AMD kernel anyway?
The compiler options used to build it. The athlon kernel is built with optimisations specific for the athlon instruction set, and the default kernel is built with a generic pentium instruction set that all processors can handle.
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve. Steve, we have used AMD processors on SuSE boxes at my work place for over 5 years
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 22 September 2003 18:58, fsanta wrote: precisely for the same reason as you (small company), and have had no problems to date (that could attributed to the processors). Allister -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/b1662etq3M8/QF8RAmkOAJ9uSY3pXfOvPGYRcVNlbHDyICDAXgCcDuZk tBuFpfR7FqXRORubsNJT6Fo= =kPsr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Mon, 2003-09-22 at 19:58, fsanta wrote:
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve.
I've been using AMD processors on and off (actually I had two intels in the meantime, a 486 and a celeron - the rest were all AMD) and I've had no problems. Currently running an AthlonXP with no problems at all. It's fast, doesn't run as hot as many people would like to make you believe (it actually runs cooler than my neighbours P4), and certainly offers more performance if money's the main consideration. hans@ossewa:~> uptime 10:41pm up 50 days 21:28, 4 users, load average: 6.03, 5.72, 4.88 hans@ossewa:~> Hans
On Monday 22 September 2003 13:58, fsanta wrote:
Any other long term AMD users here?
Yes, my first AMD was a 386 and I have used nothing but AMD since then. I have been using Linux with AMD processors since the K6-2. ******************************************************** Powered by SuSE Linux 8.2 Professional KDE 3.1.1 KMail 1.5.1 This is a Microsoft-free computer Bryan S. Tyson bryantyson@earthlink.net ********************************************************
Steve, I use almost exclusively AMD. I'm still maintaining an AMD K6/2 system running SuSE Email Server 2 which has run for 4 years without any issue. And this was written using an Athlon XP-M 2400+. Go with AMD :o) Damian
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve.
On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 16:59, Damian O'Hara wrote:
Steve,
I use almost exclusively AMD. I'm still maintaining an AMD K6/2 system running SuSE Email Server 2 which has run for 4 years without any issue.
And this was written using an Athlon XP-M 2400+. Go with AMD :o)
Damian
I was strictly an Intel guy up until this year- now due to Intels increasing anti-Linux stance I find I am relocating to AMD. Reliability is good and the processors have actually been out performing the Intel equivalent. Funny how a political motive is moving me to a better processor. (thank You for this thread I am interested in hearing any AMD oddities I may have to overcome including has anyone used the Opteron yet?)
Hi Damian. Hi everyone. Just tring to work out the price differences. A saving of Euros 200 per box over Intel seems amazing. Steve. On Tuesday 23 September 2003 09:59, Damian O'Hara wrote:
Steve,
I use almost exclusively AMD. I'm still maintaining an AMD K6/2 system running SuSE Email Server 2 which has run for 4 years without any issue.
And this was written using an Athlon XP-M 2400+. Go with AMD :o)
Damian
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve.
On Monday 22 September 2003 12:58, fsanta wrote: <snip>
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve.
Hello Steve, I have been using an AMD-based machine here at work for 4 years with absolutely NO problems or crashes. My workstation/server runs 24/7/365 and has never crashed. Given how heavily I use it that's quite an accomplishment. I use it as a development workstation for C, C++, Perl, HTML; it runs Apache webserver; runs as a MySQL database server for my automation software; runs my automation software; runs as a backup server for Suns, Dec Alphas, NT servers and equipment; and I use it to administer all of the above systems. It has been more stable than the Sun Enterprise server. I will say that I built this box to run SuSE Linux exclusively. Therefore, I purchased equipment that was certified to work with SuSE Linux 7.0 at the time. I ran SuSE 7.0 Professional on it for 3 years without any crashes. The message log was clean with no errors, meaning the system was very compatible with the hardware I chose. Nearly 3 months ago, (due to a bug in PartED that scrambled my inodes) I upgraded to SuSE 8.2 and the system has been running just as stable with it. My work system: AMD 800MHz Thunderbird Asus A7V KT133 motherboard Mitsumi 42X CD-ROM 768 Meg Infineon SDRAM non-ECC ATI 8meg PCI All-In-Wonder video Quantum IDE HDs (1-20G, 2-30G) Allied Telesyn 10/100 NIC Good quality Thermaltake CPU heatsink/fan Teac 1.44 floppy My home AMD system is older but heavily overclocked. It runs very stable as well. It has SCSI HDs, wireless NIC and 10/100 NIC, runs Apache, MySQL, Sendmail, DNS, Proxy, ect... It only runs at 400MHz. (It's max cpu speed was only suppose to be a 233 Pentium. I found some special tweeks). Jack A.
On Tuesday 23 September 2003 15:46, Jack Alderson wrote:
On Monday 22 September 2003 12:58, fsanta wrote:
<snip>
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve.
I run an Athlon 2.2 GHz machine - only difference versus the older Intel machines is the chip needs more cooling. I pulled the case off to give it better circulation, and the fan noise is rather more than I was used to. If you don't mind having a wind turbine under your desk, then Athlon is fine. Just hope I don't spill any coffee.... -AD
I run an Athlon 2.2 GHz machine - only difference versus the older Intel machines is the chip needs more cooling. I pulled the case off to give it better circulation, and the fan noise is rather more than I was used to. If you don't mind having a wind turbine under your desk, then Athlon is fine.
You do know that having the case open is generally *worse* for cooling, right? I've got an Athlon XP 1800+ which, while it has more cooling fans, is quieter than the P3-500 it replaced. It's quieter because the fans are all larger, lower rpm fans. Even under heavy loads, CPU temp rarely goes above 39C. I ran it with the case open for a while becuase I hadn't finished moving parts into it, and the temp was usually around 45C. Most (decent) cases nowadays, are designed so that air flows nicely through the case to draw in cool air and push out the hot.. My case has intake fans in the front and side (over the video card) and outgoing fans in the back and the power supply (yes, air flows *through* the psu). -- trey
On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 04:03, Alex Doll wrote:
I run an Athlon 2.2 GHz machine - only difference versus the older Intel machines is the chip needs more cooling. I pulled the case off to give it better circulation, and the fan noise is rather more than I was used to. If you don't mind having a wind turbine under your desk, then Athlon is fine.
Just hope I don't spill any coffee....
-AD
How old is "older" - my Athlon also require more cooling that my "older" intel. But that intel was a PII core celeron 500, which offered pathetic performance (even compared to my current "second machine" P-II 300 and the K6-2 500 I had before). Current P4 need just as much cooling. In fact, from what I read on tomshardware, the high end P4 chips actually give off more heat than the Athlons. The biggest increase in noise I got when moving from the celeron to the Athlon comes from the power supply - it seems to be working a lot harder than before! Hans
On Monday 22 September 2003 12:58, fsanta wrote: <snip>
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve.
Hello Steve, I have been using an AMD-based machine here at work for 4 years with absolutely NO problems or crashes. My workstation/server runs 24/7/365 and has never crashed. Given how heavily I use it that's quite an accomplishment. I use it as a development workstation for C, C++, Perl, HTML; it runs Apache webserver; runs as a MySQL database server for my automation software; runs my automation software; runs as a backup server for Suns, Dec Alphas, NT servers and equipment; and I use it to administer all of the above systems. It has been more stable than the Sun Enterprise server. I will say that I built this box to run SuSE Linux exclusively. Therefore, I purchased equipment that was certified to work with SuSE Linux 7.0 at the time. I ran SuSE 7.0 Professional on it for 3 years without any crashes. The message log was clean with no errors, meaning the system was very compatible with the hardware I chose. Nearly 3 months ago, (due to a bug in PartED that scrambled my inodes) I upgraded to SuSE 8.2 and the system has been running just as stable with it. My work system: AMD 800MHz Thunderbird Asus A7V KT133 motherboard Mitsumi 42X CD-ROM 768 Meg Infineon SDRAM non-ECC ATI 8meg PCI All-In-Wonder video Quantum IDE HDs (1-20G, 2-30G) Allied Telesyn 10/100 NIC Good quality Thermaltake CPU heatsink/fan Teac 1.44 floppy My home AMD system is older but heavily overclocked. It runs very stable as well. It has SCSI HDs, wireless NIC and 10/100 NIC, runs Apache, MySQL, Sendmail, DNS, Proxy, ect... It only runs at 400MHz. (It's max cpu speed was only suppose to be a 233 Pentium. I found some special tweeks). Jack A.
On Monday 22 September 2003 12:58, fsanta wrote:
On Monday 22 September 2003 16:47, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Monday 22 September 2003 16.36, fsanta wrote:
Hi everyone. I just bought a new box with an AMD XP 2200 processor.YOU pulled down a big patch last night and I now have k_athlon-2.4.20-100. Is this correct for 8.2?
Yes
Also, what's the difference between the Intel and the AMD kernel anyway?
The compiler options used to build it. The athlon kernel is built with optimisations specific for the athlon instruction set, and the default kernel is built with a generic pentium instruction set that all processors can handle.
Are there any strong reasons not to go with AMD rather than Intel? Are there any reliabilty issues? Financially AMD makes lot of sense and we are thinking of 18 new boxes like mine for our school lan which would be as it is now: 100% SuSE 8.2. We can pick up the boxes for Euros 400 whereas an PIV 2.4 is over Euros 600. Any other long term AMD users here? Cheers, Steve.
Hello Steve, I have been using an AMD-based machine here at work for 4 years with absolutely NO problems or crashes. My workstation/server runs 24/7/365 and has never crashed. Given how heavily I use it that's quite an accomplishment. I use it as a development workstation for C, C++, Perl, HTML; it runs Apache webserver; runs as a MySQL database server for my automation software; runs my automation software; runs as a backup server for Suns, Dec Alphas, NT servers and equipment; and I use it to administer all of the above systems. It has been more stable than the Sun Enterprise server. I will say that I built this box to run SuSE Linux exclusively. Therefore, I purchased equipment that was certified to work with SuSE Linux 7.0 at the time. I ran SuSE 7.0 Professional on it for 3 years without any crashes. The message log was clean with no errors, meaning the system was very compatible with the hardware I chose. Nearly 3 months ago, (due to a bug in PartED that scrambled my inodes) I upgraded to SuSE 8.2 and the system has been running just as stable with it. My work system: AMD 800MHz Thunderbird Asus A7V KT133 motherboard Mitsumi 42X CD-ROM 768 Meg Infineon SDRAM non-ECC ATI 8meg PCI All-In-Wonder video Quantum IDE HDs (1-20G, 2-30G) Allied Telesyn 10/100 NIC Good quality Thermaltake CPU heatsink/fan Teac 1.44 floppy My home AMD system is older but heavily overclocked. It runs very stable as well. It has SCSI HDs, wireless NIC and 10/100 NIC, runs Apache, MySQL, Sendmail, DNS, Proxy, ect... It only runs at 400MHz. (It's max cpu speed was only suppose to be a 233 Pentium. I found some special tweeks for the AMD). Jack A.
The athlon kernel fork occurred a couple years ago when it was discovered that linux would crash under certain situations due to the different way the Athlon handles memory. Allan Cox developed a kernel patch to address the problem and the athlon fork was born. Since then, other optomizations were also added. Previously it was not considered worth the time to optimize for the Athlon since it is also compatible with all Intel instructions sets (MMX/SSE, etc.). The Athlon bug pretty much killed that idea, so it became worth it since there needed to be a forked kernel anyway. "Lucky" for us Athlon users. (Never thought a bug would do some good) John S. Anders Johansson wrote:
On Monday 22 September 2003 16.36, fsanta wrote:
Hi everyone. I just bought a new box with an AMD XP 2200 processor.YOU pulled down a big patch last night and I now have k_athlon-2.4.20-100. Is this correct for 8.2?
Yes
Also, what's the difference between the Intel and the AMD kernel anyway?
The compiler options used to build it. The athlon kernel is built with optimisations specific for the athlon instruction set, and the default kernel is built with a generic pentium instruction set that all processors can handle.
On Monday 22 September 2003 21.14, js wrote:
The athlon kernel fork occurred a couple years ago when it was discovered that linux would crash under certain situations due to the different way the Athlon handles memory. Allan Cox developed a kernel patch to address the problem and the athlon fork was born. Since then, other optomizations were also added. Previously it was not considered worth the time to optimize for the Athlon since it is also compatible with all Intel instructions sets (MMX/SSE, etc.). The Athlon bug pretty much killed that idea, so it became worth it since there needed to be a forked kernel anyway. "Lucky" for us Athlon users. (Never thought a bug would do some good)
First of all it's not a fork, since it's maintained in the main kernel tree. Secondly, I just greped the source for athlon specific things, and the only thing I could find different between compiling for athlon and compiling for Pentium III is the use of 3DNow and a different implementation of MMX. Of course, I may have missed something. I greped for CONFIG_MK7 and I looked at arch/i386/config.in and compared the defines set for the various architectures
Anders, I knew you would get lonely/bored and come back. :-) Tom On Mon, 2003-09-22 at 12:37, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Monday 22 September 2003 21.14, js wrote:
The athlon kernel fork occurred a couple years ago when it was discovered that linux would crash under certain situations due to the different way the Athlon handles memory. Allan Cox developed a kernel patch to address the problem and the athlon fork was born. Since then, other optomizations were also added. Previously it was not considered worth the time to optimize for the Athlon since it is also compatible with all Intel instructions sets (MMX/SSE, etc.). The Athlon bug pretty much killed that idea, so it became worth it since there needed to be a forked kernel anyway. "Lucky" for us Athlon users. (Never thought a bug would do some good)
First of all it's not a fork, since it's maintained in the main kernel tree. Secondly, I just greped the source for athlon specific things, and the only thing I could find different between compiling for athlon and compiling for Pentium III is the use of 3DNow and a different implementation of MMX.
Of course, I may have missed something. I greped for CONFIG_MK7 and I looked at arch/i386/config.in and compared the defines set for the various architectures
-- Tom Nielsen Neuro Logic Systems 805.389.5435 x18 www.neuro-logic.com
Anders Johansson wrote:
On Monday 22 September 2003 21.14, js wrote:
<snip> so it became worth it since there needed to be a forked kernel anyway. "Lucky" for us Athlon users. (Never thought a bug would do some good)
First of all it's not a fork, since it's maintained in the main kernel tree. Secondly, I just greped the source for athlon specific things, and the only thing I could find different between compiling for athlon and compiling for Pentium III is the use of 3DNow and a different implementation of MMX.
Of course, I may have missed something. I greped for CONFIG_MK7 and I looked at arch/i386/config.in and compared the defines set for the various architectures
Ah, yes. I forgot the term fork has special meaning in the *nix world. Anyway, the Athlon bug disappeared in more recent processors such as those >= Thunderbird. The fork/non fork is just my terminology which I thought would make it more clear since it originally appeared as a patch you had to apply yourself. It was later added to the main branch so that you could select it in the processor type section, so technically you are correct of course. I thought this would make more sense in the context of Steve's question. I wanted to point out that the Athlon bug was the reason the Athlon got separate attention to begin with, once Athlon specific code was added to the tree it just went from there. Since suse doesn't expect each user to compile their own kernel, including those with Athlons, it is only logical that they would have to compile a separate one for Athlon systems since there are still people with Athlon computers which have this bug (like myself--600MHZ slot A). My Pentium and Athlon XP types are unaffected. Besides, optimizing the 3DNOW code is great for games and the gimp. J
participants (12)
-
Alex Doll -
Allister Gearon -
Anders Johansson -
Bryan Tyson -
Damian O'Hara -
David Blomber -
fsanta -
H du Plooy -
Jack Alderson -
js -
Tom Nielsen -
Trey Gruel