Which is the best choice, pae or x64?

Christopher Chan christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk
Sat Sep 25 13:03:38 UTC 2010


Rofail Qu wrote:
> Thanks for reply.
> It seems that intel x86 PC with x64 ubuntu don't have performance
> benefit from virtualization tech

Can you express that a bit differently so we can try to understand what
you are trying to ask? Are you asking about 32-bit guests?


> even though it can run 64-bit applications. Is that true?

Virtualization performance 'benefit' and ability to run 64-bit
applications have nothing in common.


> Put another way,in spite of compatibility of applications, could an
> intel x86 PC running x64 applications surely
> give a performance benefit? Apache for example.

An Intel x86 cpu cannot run x64 applications. Your E8400 is NOT a x86
cpu. It is an EMT64 cpu. To run x64 applications, you have to use EMT64
or 64-bit mode (automatically done for you - just install a x64 Ubuntu
distro) which your E8400 is perfectly capable of.


> 
> 2010/9/25 Tim Frost <timfrost at xtra.co.nz>:
>> On Sat, 2010-09-25 at 16:06 +0800, Rofail Qu wrote:
>>> My PC is x86 arch and has 4GB of mem.
>>> So, i think it support x64 as well.
>>> The question is, which kernel should i choose? The pae or x64?
>>> Which is the best choice?
>> With 4GB RAM, things are marginal.
>>
>> If this is your desktop (or laptop) workstation, you are probably best
>> to stay 32-bit, and run the 32-bit PAE kernel to get access to the extra
>> RAM.
>>
>> For a system designated to be a server, a 64-bit environment may give a
>> performance benefit.
>>
>>>  Why?
>> There are still a lot of user-interface programs that don't work well
>> (if at all) in a 64-bit environment.
>>
>> My desktop is 64-bit, but there are a few things that I can't do in the
>> native desktop (even with the 32-bit compatibility packages), so I use a
>> 32-bit virtual machine to run those applications.
>>
>> By comparison, there are very few back-end applications that don't
>> benefit from the 64-bit address space.
>>
>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>> Tim
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tim Frost <timfrost at xtra.co.nz>
>>
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>>
>>
> 





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