On 3/22/06, Mariano López Reta <mlreta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Fellow co-listers: > > Right now, on my machine, there's a 64bit FC4. The CPU is an Athlon64 > 3000+ with 512MB 400Mhz RAM. Graphics are handled by a GeForce 5200 with > 128MB. HD is a 160GB 7200RPM Hitachi SATA. > > I'm downloading both x86-64 and i386 versions of FC5, so the big > question is: should I "downgrade" to i386 in order to get all firefox > plugins, less compilation hassles when compiling 3rd-party stuff, and > (mainly) shockwave/flash (unfortunately, most web pages, including home > banking ones, use flash in my country, so there's no way to avoid it). > Or should I stick to the 64bit version and face all the inconveniences > that I have now? Quick answer would be: if you can handle the hassle, You can relatively easily run 32-bit Firefox with plugins on a 64-bit OS and system. I am doing that right now with FC4. It takes a little setup, but it can be done. Search the mailing list archives for details on how. > keep 64. But the deeper question here is: is it worth it to face all the > hassle? Are there really significant differences in performance? That depends on what kind of programs you run. Most programs are interactive, and thus the slowest part is usually the human user ;). In those cases, you won't see much improvement. If you run processor and memory intensive programs, then you probably will see an improvement. For instance, I did some tests a while ago with the 3D animation program Blender (in extras) and noted a better than 2x improvement in rendering time with the 64-bit version. I'd say that is significant. I need to rerun that test on my new hardware to confirm that. Jonathan -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
