[CentOS] cpu type

[Gregory P. Ennis]

On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 14:36 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
> On Mon, 04 Feb 2008 06:01:11 -0700
> Warren Young <warren at etr-usa.com> wrote:
> 
> > If you don't have enough RAM to need 64-bit addressing, you're just 
> > slowing the system down, making it deal with larger addresses for no 
> > benefit.
> 
> While my Centos machines are all running 32-bit at the moment, I have Fedora
> 8/x86_64 on my main desktop computer (this one) and there is a noticeable
> speed increase when scrolling a large Scribus document, compared to when I had
> Fedora 7/i386 on this same computer.

I have had the same experience.  Until I looked for the presence of a 64
bit machine I installed a 32 bit os on everything.  I found the sales
descriptors of computer stores unreliable as to what was 32 bit and what
was 64 bit.  If cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep " lm " truly identifies 64 bit
machines we had some 64 bit CPU's that were not identified.  

I experimented a little to see if putting a 64 os on these would improve
desktop responsiveness and my gross perception was that there was an
improvement.  Most of the time these desktop units had less than 2 gigs
of RAM.  However, I may have been seduced by positive expectations.
Does anyone know of a way to really determine if this is significant.  

I recently installed CentOS-5.0-i386 for a mail server that was supposed
to be 32 bit, but when I checked it after the install I found it was 64
bit.  I decided to take the time to reinstall CentOS-5.0-x86_64.  This
machine came Vista and was sold to us from Fry's as a 32 bit refurbished
Compaq.  

So being able to tell what is a 32 and 64 cpu and whether running a 32
bit or 64 bit os on a small mail server is worth while might be
helpful.  

Any thoughts?

Greg