I've read a bit about 64 vs 32 bit for desktop machines but have been
wondering a bit about it all lately.
My hardware is a core 2 duo which supports 64 bit, nvidia pci-e and 4 Gb
RAM (all about 3 months old).
I'm running up to date CRUX 2.2 32 bit. I've been using the following
pkgmk.conf
export CFLAGS="-O2 -march=nocona -pipe"
export CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=nocona -pipe"
And just about everything works fine (some weird firefox hanging problem
but that's another story).
I tried using:
export CFLAGS="-O2 -march=x86-64 -pipe"
export CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=x86-64 -pipe"
In pkgmk.conf and rebuilt bzip2 to test and it's actually faster (tested
a large file) and it runs. So I got a bit more adventurous and tried
compiling firefox and thunderbird with x86-64 CFLAGS and they seem to
work too. Firefox (hanging seems to have stopped but I haven't tested
fully) seems to run faster, rendering pages just seems faster than before.
Has anyone else played with CFLAGS and 64 bit options?
Because I'm using a 32 bit toolchain does it just ignore the x86-64
CFLAGS and resort to basic cpu flags? If so why would they be faster
than nocona?
Any thoughts? Ideally I'd like to run a pure 64 bit system but I'm not
really that fussed.
Thanks,
Joe