[olug] Advice on a new rig

[Luke Dashjr]

On Tuesday 25 November 2008 06:46:01 pm Christopher Cashell wrote:
> Because those platforms have *drastically* different requirements than
> general purpose desktops and servers.  They are, for all intents and
> purposes, embedded devices running custom written software that is
> targeted to the specific hardware it runs on.  Both PowerPC and MIPS
> are quite popular in the embedded market.  However, they're
> essentially non-existent in the current desktop and server markets
> (the only real exceptions being IBM AIX boxes, or aging PowerPC Macs).
>  Unless you search ebay, you can't even buy one easily these days.

It would seem even Microsoft disagrees about PowerPC not being appropriate for 
general purpose computing. They once tried to move Windows to PowerPC, but 
Intel won out. Even still, Apple successfully used PowerPC for many years, and 
had the benefit of the superior processor. They were forced to move to x86 due 
to IBM pushing the PowerPC development toward gaming consoles and thus not 
updating their desktop or laptop CPUs. Either way, x86 is kludgy, and inferior 
to basically every other used architecture.

It is also worth noting that Toshiba is coming out with (or maybe already 
has?) a Cell-based laptop.

> As for 32bit/64bit compatibility, needing to run 32 bit code on a PowerPC or
> MIPS platform is generally going to be much less of a consideration, because
> you're not going to find any software (regardless of 32bit or 64bit) for it
> that isn't provided by your distribution.  It's either included, or you're
> building from source (or trying to, considering both are second-class
> platforms for most developers).  Or you're screwed and out of luck.

32-bit code uses less memory than 64-bit code. On PowerPC, at least, the 
interoperability is such that you would want your entire OS 32-bit, with only 
a few select applications using the 64-bit mode (those that need > 4 GB RAM 
just by themselves).

Due to the overhead x86_64 has, my machine of that architecture runs in a pure 
64-bit mode, without any 32-bit compatibility whatsoever.

> With x86-64, you get the benefit of the distributions providing a fully
> features environment capable of running 64bit apps natively, and easily
> running 32bit apps, as well.  

I don't consider installing a second copy of all the relevant libraries to be 
"easy". In fact, it defeats the entire purpose of using a mixed 32/64 system.

> Considering that any third-party applications that you might want to run are
> frequently only available in 32bit x86, that's a rather useful bit.

What applications depend on a specific x86_32 architecture nowadays? All the 
programs I use compile just fine on any architecture.

> Regardless of all this, the original poster specifically asked about a
> "dual-boot rig for gaming", which completely rules out PowerPC and MIPS,
> unless he wants to run his games on Windows NT 4 (probably not the best
> choice for gaming at this point).

Or he could run his games on Linux, back on topic here.