chin808 Posted June 21, 2004 Report Share Posted June 21, 2004 I have been looking through the mandrake and suse websites and reading about their respective 64 bit distros. I see that on the suse site to get suse 9.1 pro it will cost you, and going over to mandrakes download site, I only see i586 versions for free download. Am I wrong (hopefully) or do yyou have to pay for a 64 bit distro??? Im definetely buying an amd athlon 64FX, and Im spending around $2300... Id rather not have to shell out another $130 for an os. Although it would be nice to have the official radeon packages. -C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 22, 2004 Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 You can get the Mandrake 10.0 rc1 for AMD64 from any of the mirrors, under devel/iso/amd64/ (i.e., from carroll 10.0 final for AMD64 should be out within a month, I believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chin808 Posted June 22, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 You can get the Mandrake 10.0 rc1 for AMD64 from any of the mirrors, under devel/iso/amd64/ (i.e., from carroll 10.0 final for AMD64 should be out within a month, I believe. nice 1 son and yes... I am going radeon... muhahahaha and yes I am dual booting xp pro so I can play far cry and hl 2.... waahhhhh I hope ati comes correct with the amd64 drivers before my card becomes obsolete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chin808 Posted June 22, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 Since the 64bit chip is backwards compatible do you think the 32bit linux drivers would work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 22, 2004 Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 dunno, try to get Gowator in here, he's got an AMD64 machine and has played with 10.0 for AMD64 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 22, 2004 Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 they should work if proper programming is adhered to like not accessing the hardware directly but my experience of closed source drivers with NVidia is they do. The 32bit steadfastly refuses to work with amd64 but the opensource nv does work. Indeed the 32 bit nvidia locks up when loading in a 32 bit kernel... nvidia have a specially recompiled driver for amd64 so its not looking good. Mostly I think its openGL etc that cheats on good technique in a quest for speed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chin808 Posted June 22, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 they should work if proper programming is adhered to like not accessing the hardware directly but my experience of closed source drivers with NVidia is they do. The 32bit steadfastly refuses to work with amd64 but the opensource nv does work. Indeed the 32 bit nvidia locks up when loading in a 32 bit kernel... nvidia have a specially recompiled driver for amd64 so its not looking good. Mostly I think its openGL etc that cheats on good technique in a quest for speed! Thanx Gowator, but Im going to get a radeon 9800 pro, know anything about them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 22, 2004 Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 oh dear, you're screwed! sorry, but out of the two radeon is the least likely to make drivers for 64bit Linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 22, 2004 Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 (edited) No except the more advanced the more they cheat on the direct HW access and the bigger chance of breaking the kernel .... and causing a crash.. which is the whole reason its bad programming practice (outside MS) to make direct hw calls. My guess is its likely it won't work with the 32 bit drivers becuase of the different bus architecture on AMD 64. My 64 bit driver loads OK with a 64 bit kernel but the 32 bit driver doesnt with the 32 bit kernel.... and Ive yet to try (I'd have to force it) to try the 32 bit with the 64 bit kernel. I'd think before buying this if no 64 bit driver is available else you could end up running a 32 bit kernel too which defeats the object.... its you who's buying... so its up to you but I'd play safe maybe use an old card for now and wait and see if they release the 64 bit one! edits I see tyme replied.... think like this the AGP bus is a 128 bit highway....and this is fed from the northbridge from CPU which is traditionally 32 bit except its not anymore its 64/2x32 ... Now good programming technique says this doesnt mqtter, the klernel takes care with the HCL... unfortunately we demand faster perforamce than this can deal with .. so we cheat hence the drivers get horribly confused becuase they have 2x the bus width.... Edited June 22, 2004 by Gowator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainvt Posted June 22, 2004 Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 (edited) Radeon 32 bit drivers are incompatible with 64 bit mdk 10, the torrent for final mdk amd64 is available to silver club members, I dont think it is going to be made available to non memebers without paying, fedora core 64bit is free and available for download now, on the radeon front the drivers should be available by end of the year, (I bought ATI as well for 64 bit box thinking they were open source duh!) but are available from their web site for xp now. Edited June 22, 2004 by iainvt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 22, 2004 Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 ...I dont think it is going to be made available to non memebers without paying... I doubt that. Mandrake has a long history of always giving out iso's for download, I think in time they'll release it - just not yet. Just like the regular version of Mandrake, club members get it first, the rest later. But I guess only time will tell, eh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainvt Posted June 22, 2004 Report Share Posted June 22, 2004 (edited) Mandrake has a long history of always giving out iso's for download, I think in time they'll release it I think you are probably right, although as club members we have been awaiting the torrent for a month and have just got it now, RC1 is really too buggy if a good platform is needed. Edited June 22, 2004 by iainvt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chin808 Posted June 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 Im going to be using xp pro for gaming and photoshop...only, and mandrake/suse for everything else. I suppose if I could have adequate 2d performance... ie running my screen at a nice 1600 x 1200 res with a high refresh rate and all that... then I can live with that. I dont know if Im ready to pay out the nose for an nvidia card that can match the performance of the radeon I want. As far as using an old card for now... well I have a tnt2 ultra so thats not really an option here ;) Thanx for all the great responses tho... I have alot to consider. -C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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