[extropy-chat] TECH: Computer Upgrade Paths...

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

On Tue, 2004-05-18 at 10:44 +0930, Emlyn ORegan wrote:

> > Is the productivity on a Pentium 4 or a G5 *really* so much higher
> > than an Athlon that it justifies this kind of price differential?
> > [You have to remember that I'm typing this on a dual Pentium Pro
> > @ 200 MHz (~6 year old technology) and it usually meets my needs
> > just fine...]
> > 
> > Robert
> 
> In one word? No. 
> 
> 64 bit might be a geek toy on a laptop at this stage, however. Does any
> usable OS take advantage of 64 bit?

Yes, Linux has 64 bit support for the Itaniums and Opterons/x86-64 and i
think G5 too.  Don't know how many optimisations make use of their
64-bitness but at minimum you can run 64-bit user space apps and take
advantage of the extended memory space (48-bit currently in opterons i
think, don't know about the others)

alejandro