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General discussion

AMD64-type CPUs.....

Feb 2, 2011 5:53AM PST

Everything I've read says that x86-64 CPUs (like Athlon II & Phenom II) will run BOTH 32 and 64-bit software. Yet I see in Wikipedia article 'Comparison of open source operating systems' ('supported architecture'table),that Haiku & Syllable does not support x86-64...so what does this mean? Will AMD64 CPUs run these operating systems or not? Anyone got a definitive answer?

Discussion is locked

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Re: AMD64 CPU's
Feb 2, 2011 4:12PM PST

Why not try and let us know the outcome of your experiments?

And I doubt if this is a newbie question. A newbie should just buy a PC with Windows 7 and use it.

Kees

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Yes, you can install both Operating Systems ...
Feb 3, 2011 1:34AM PST

on a 64 bit processor BUT both Operating Systems are only 32 bit so they cannot take full advantage of the processor capabilities (just as 32 bit Windows or Linux cannot take full advantage but run fine anyway). All the unique features of x86-64 are available only in its long mode, which is 64-bit, but short mode features are fully available.

Both take advantage of multi-cores on both 32 bit and 64 bit processors (again, like Windows or Linux).

Haiku uses PAE (Physical Address Extension). This means the OS can use up to 64GB RAM in a computer, BUT no applications can actually access more than 4Gb individually. PAE does allow up to 64 Gb of RAM by applications, drivers or kernel, all together.
http://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/R1/Alpha2/ImprovementsSinceRelease

Both the alternate OS you mentioned seem to perform better if NOT installed in virtual machines, but as a newby you probably already know this.