Re: various rants about 7-currnet on AMD64

This would be much more helpful if you were to file bug reports for
the individual items with greater detail and then follow up on them
periodically.

 -Kip

On 9/30/07, Aryeh Friedman <aryeh.friedman_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry for the negative tone of this message but a little background
> may help.... about 1.5 months ago I bought a new machine for personal
> use [my only machine actually]... hw (upgraded from a p4-2.8):
>
> intel e6850
> intel p35 mobo (ihc9)
> 4 gb (ddr2-667 1GBx4)
> 500 gb sata
> 8600 GS nvidia (replaced for reasons below witha 5200 GT)
> 20" widescreen crt
> direct cable connection to the net
> hp deskjet 6980
>
> Being a FreeBSD users since the mid 90's I obviously started with
> it... in the quest for a working well tuned config (still a few issues
> even with the current config):
>
> 6.2 (cvsup'ed to most recent PL) with i386 kernel
> 7-current  (cvsup'ed upto last night) i386
> 7-current amd64
>
> The last shows the most promise so far:
>
> Issues (all of which have been posted on -questions or -x11):
>
> 6.2 --
>
> * Horrid non-SMP kernel performence (acceptable after SMP was added)
>
> * Xorg (7.2) not working at all (vesa 640x480 with no mouse was the best I
> managed)
>
> * Many TCP/IP stack issues
>
> * All native java builds fail with compile errors
>
> * hplip fails immediately after install
>
> * Doesn't recognize PATA drives if installed at the same time as SATA
>
> 7-CURRENT i386 --
>
> * Horrid performence under default kernel needed to switch to
> ULE/IPI_PREMEPTION/DEVICE_POLLING
>
> * Kernel sees card after install of nvidia driver but Xorg (7.3)
> doesn't recognize it (vesa 1024x768 only)... many address conflicts
> reported... nv driver is no better
>
> * All native java builds fail with compile errors
>
> * hplip fails immediately after install
>
> * Diablo-jdk15 completely broken for any GUI oriented code
>
> 7-CURRENT amd64
>
> * Diablo-jdk15 completely broken for any GUI oriented code (jdk16
> works well though)
>
> * Many desktop ports fail with i386 vs. amd64 errors
>
> * Nvidia-driver does not support amd64 (but nv works now but only at 1024x768)
>
> Misc Rants:
>
> CPUTYPE naming --
>
>     For people who have been around for a while (read mid-90's) and
> have never used any AMD mobo's we are used to "historical" differences
> between early pentiums and amd equivs (for that reason I have never
> bought a AMD machine)... so calling the 64bit x86 architure amd64 is
> confusing and misleading.
>
> HARDWARE.TXT --
>
>     hardware.txt sheds absulutly no light on the above issue except to
> make it clear that ia64 is not the right choice.
>
> Suggestions:
>
> * Figure out why xorg should care if your on a 32 or 64 bit addressing
> bus (has to do with placing pci's buffers at the high end of RAM I
> think)
>
> * AMD64 should be recommended (or at least better documented) for all
> dual-core machines
>
> * Both nvidia.ko and the nv driver need to be improved (I know this is
> nvidia's problem)
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe_at_freebsd.org"
>