Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : AMD 64 processor, worthy of trying?

[ServerZB]

I see dedicatednow offer some speicals on AMD64 box.

I know that 64bit process need software backup, how does CentOS 64 work now? stable?

would AMD 64 increase much performances?

Thanks!!

Zenbo

[kris1351]

You will find here that lots of folks like the AMD procs much more than the Intel based. They are absolute work horses and dependable. I have Centos and Fedora running servers here in my office on AMD 64 chips and they are nice. The Opteron processors are even faster, but I don't think you could possibly go wrong with the switch.

[dkitchen]

If you're running Linux, switching to 64bit will give you a huge advantage, go for it

FYI I'm running an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ here in my desktop and it runs at a very cool 29 degrees.

Dan

[2Guns]

The AMD line is very strong, and you wont be dissapointed.

[HostingInsider]

Originally posted by RazorBlue - Dan
If you're running Linux, switching to 64bit will give you a huge advantage, go for it

FYI I'm running an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ here in my desktop and it runs at a very cool 29 degrees.

Dan

It's frozen?

Oh yeah, system temps are always in Celcius

[almahdi]

AMD are in 64-bit CPUs, you'll never go wrong with AMD...


AMD Rulez!!

[Seanzer]

The AMD64s are my favorite. However, with kernel optimizations... it could go either way. If you're running a business, focus on the cost of the two servers and what platform you're more familiar with. Many people will say that dual xeons outperform AMD64s, however I find that in most cases, they just don't know how to optimize the platform and the apps they ran weren't built for AMD64. So think about that too.

[Cserver]

Yeah, Xeon's outperform AMD64's, but amd64's don't cost much more than an Egg McMuffin. Xeon's are substantially more pricey. I still use Xeons + Opterons for game servers, and AMD 64's + P4's for Web servers.

[porcupine]

Avoid 64 bit if you intend to use CPanel. There are so many library related problems with CPanel (as X86_64 generally use /lib64, and /lib, instead of just /lib, etc.) it's hard to toss it into a production environment. I'm fairly sure we'll end up buying a second dual opteron rig, just so we can gracefully move our customers on the 64 bit back to a dual opteron running 32 bit (a bit wastefull, but I'll drop some speed, for more reliability, even if its just at the panel level).

I've also noticed Apache on this Fedora Core 2 / 64, with CPanel server has some very serious memory leaks (and we have 3 gigs on it no less, as a direct result).

[Seanzer]

xeons don't necessarily outperform opterons.... I have seen benchmarks sway both ways. Again, I contribute the data to how the OS was built. Of course, I would like to use dual opterons, but it's unfortunate that not enough apps are optimized on the x86_64 platform. That's where you'll see that the xeon outperforms the opteron.

I promise you, whatever you choose, focus on price and what apps you'll be running, and you'll be ok.

[Cserver]

I meant the amd 64 3200+ etc. I wasn't saying that Xeon's outperform opterons.

[Seanzer]

AHH, i thought so.. but when i see AMD64 in a server context, I think opterons... athlon 64s shouldn't be used for hosting solutions.

[lumbyjj]

I run CPanel on FreeBSD AMD 64 without problems.. It hums along quite nicely... I'm running dual AMD Opteron 242's with 2 GB RAM and SATA HD's on RAID and am loving it..

[porcupine]

Originally posted by lumbyjj
I run CPanel on FreeBSD AMD 64 without problems.. It hums along quite nicely... I'm running dual AMD Opteron 242's with 2 GB RAM and SATA HD's on RAID and am loving it..

I've yet to try the FreeBSD 64 CPanel configuration (after the past > 3 years of being bitten in the butt with CPanel and FreeBSD, with their unofficial beta, etc. etc. etc.), I'd strayed from it.

In Fedora, theres numerous problems with the naming scheme on the libraries (between "lib", and "lib64"), frontpage still doesen't run (last I checked). A few other apache modules (eg. pear, etc.) would not configure without rather extensive modification, and php would not upgrade (due to the images libraries, libjpeg, etc. missing/in locations CPanel doesen't check).

All in all, not worth the hassle IMHO. If CPanel wasn't such a pricey retain product, I'd definatly be more understanding (eg. an opensource project), but IMHO, they shouldn't even be claiming x86_64 cpanel is 'stable'.

[bteeter]

We started deploying AMD 64 servers a few months ago. My experience is that they are a LOT faster than the AMD XP servers we used to deploy before them. I feel comfortable putting at least 50% more web sites on a 64 server that I did a similarly rated XP Server. We are running Fedora Core.

We have one AMD 64 server that never seems to slow down, even mid-day when sites are all busy. I won't be buying anything but AMD 64's for the foreseeable future.

Hope this helps!

Thanks - Brian

(As an aside, my Laptop is an AMD 64 and it is great. Its the fastest one I've ever worked on -- plus the Radeon 9600 makes for decent gaming. :-)