Re: [SLE] Does upgrading motherboard/CPU actually work? Also, 64bit vs. 32bit....

From: Rafael E. Herrera (raffo_at_neuronet.pitt.edu)
Date: 09/12/04

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    Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 19:51:40 -0400
To: suse-linux-e@suse.com

    Preston Crawford wrote:
    > I've never done this before with any OS so I'm a little wary in general.
    > But I have a P3 800 that I'm thinking of upgrading as prices are really
    > low and I have a little money right now. Is it a fairly trouble-free
    > process to install a new motherboard/CPU on an existing install or do
    > you have to reinstall the OS? As I've never done this before I have no
    > idea how it will turn out, if SuSE will recognize the new hardware and
    > just deal with it or if it will be looking for old hardware when it
    > boots and be unable to readjust. Thoughts on this?

    over time I've gone from AMD K6 to P3 to Athlon XP to Athlon 64 and back (today)
    to an Athlon XP again.

    If your hard drives are hanging from the regular IDE controller, swapping
    mobos should be no problem. Afterwards, you'll need to run Yast2 to
    reinstall the drivers for your network adapter, sound controller, etc.
    If you go from P3 to AMD, you'll need to re-install the kernel, but do it
    last, make sure it works with the older kernel.

    > Also, if I decide to do it, is there any advantage to going 64bit?
    > Obviously that would require a reinstall, but I'm curious, though. Since
    > I have a 64-bit OS it's pretty tempting. Are there any performance gains
    > to be had over 32-bit? For help in answering this I'm a
    > java/web/database developer. So that + reading email, ripping MP3s,
    > burning CDs, browsing, etc. are what I mainly use this computer for. Any
    > advice is appreciated.

    64bit is being taunted as giving you higher performance. Note that these
    are new motherboards, they may not be supported 100%.

    I bought an MSI board with an AMD 64 3000, it comes with two SATA
    controllers and 4 IDE ports (one set by Promise, the other set by VIA). Both
    SATA controllers are supported by suse, but the Promise IDE controller was
    not and I could not get IDE drives on that bus to work. In fact, after
    removing the drives my system would not boot (plugging the drives back in
    allowed the system to boot, a pain in the ass). I swapped the MSI board in
    and kept my suse 9.0 installation intact. I did not see an appreciable
    performance improvement. I even tried a new installation on a separate
    partition of the 64bit version of Suse 9.1, I couldn't feel a big difference,
    but i didn't use it much.

    I decided to go back to an Athlon system. I write software, too late I
    realized that developing on the 64bit system, it would give me 64bit-processor
    only binaries. In our company we don't use 64 bit systems, and I don't have
    the time to set my system up to cross-compile for 32bit processors. Since you
    develop databases, make sure your applications will not have portability
    issues if you go for a 64 bit system.

    Another potential problem are general applications ported to 64 bit systems.
    There may be subtle issues with some software packages compiled for 64bits.
    I don't know of any at the moment, but I'm not up-to-date on that topic.

    The bottom line is that swapping mobos is not terribly difficult, just
    pick the right board for you. 

    -- 
      Rafael
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