[NTLUG:Discuss] nVidia and Suse 9.3

[Justin M. Forbes]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 04:09:32PM -0500, Chris Cox wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the info.  Maybe I missed the benchmarks showing the massive
> performance gains with numa, etc... 

A lot of people never paid attention to the numa vs. non issue, it doesnt
help that the majority of SMP Opteron boards come with node interleave
turned on by default (effectively turning off numa on the platform).
Turning off memory interleave and using an x86_64 smp kernel will greatly
increase performance (20%ish). 

> The driver issues are mainly with
> proprietary drivers.... Nvidia WAS an example, but their support is
> getting there (though the nvnews.net forums still show some issues).
> Cisco VPN, digi and some others probably not there yet.

Generally speaking I avoid proprietary drivers as much as I can.  Sadly I
am sure there are still some straglers there. If you run into an open
source driver which isnt 64bit clean, let me know.

> Again... I was thinking about helping out by taking my machine to SUSE 9.3,
> 64bit but I just have a terrible feeling that eventually, I'll be back
> at the 32bit version AGAIN (I can almost guarantee it).

I would like to see your impressions after running 64bit for a while, even
if you have to switch back. 
> 
> The world is much bigger than FF/Thunderbird/OOo.  If I knew that
> CrossOver Office/VMware/Cedega/etc. would all work flawlessly with
> the 64bit kernel, I'd feel more comfortable.... but those tend to
> be things that are on the bottom of the priority list for most
> kernel/app developers.  Who knows about running Office 2000/XP apps
> which aren't 64-bit ready??
> 
VMWare is supported under a 64bit host now I am pretty sure.  I tend to
forget that things like CrossOver Office/Cedega/etc exist at all :(  I dont
know which if any of these have 64bit support or run appropriately in 32bit
mode.

> So... the question is:  Justin, just how much DO you run on your
> Opteron?
> 
Heh, I suppose there are a few differences.  I run the usual developer
workload, plus multimedia, web, etc.  Other than occasionally trying out
the nvidia drivers to make sure everything is working, and the flash/java
plug-ins I do not run anything proprietary at all.

> I really do appreciate your feedback... hope things are going well at
> rpath.
> 

Aye, things are going quite well.  Like I said, let me know what you see
with 64bit mode.

Justin M. Forbes
Kernel Engineer
rpath, Inc.
http://wiki.conary.com