On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Joel CARNAT wrote:

> Hi,
>
> for private reasons (nvtv support in fact ;) I'm running NetBSD/i386 on
> my Shuttle SN85G4v3. I've just tested WinXP-64 on it and have issues
> (which we don't care here ;) too.
>
> I read that even Solaris runs apps in 32bit-mode (firefox) on sparc64.
> This makes me believe, firefox is not written 64bits in mind.
> So, even if I compile/run firefox (from pkgsrc) on NetBSD/amd64, I
> guess it's not using all the benefits of amd64 specifics arch, true ?
>
> My question is, when you have to run NetBSD/i386 on an AMD64 machine
> (for driver or app support), to what extend do you get the benefits
> from the AMD64 architecture ?

 	You get a really fast 32bit x86 box :)

> I read AMD64 was cool for 3D rendering - but what if you compile, let's
> say povray, and it's code was not made with 64bits in mind... Do you
> really get speed gain ?

 	In 64 bit mode you get more registers, and they are larger, so
 	even if the code only uses 32 bit types, you should be able to
 	have more variables in registers. There is obviously some loss
 	due to the larger memory footprint for pointers etc.

-- 
 		David/absolute       -- www.NetBSD.org: No hype required --