DDQOTD (Dumb Distro Question of the Day) Does Fedora 10 install as a 64 bit OS when it senses 64 bit hardware?

[Alex Hewitt]

Jarod Wilson wrote:
> Alex Hewitt wrote:
>   
>> Just an update - the system that I was trying to install various 64 bit 
>> Linux distros also wouldn't install Vista 64. Turns out the processor I 
>> was using has some kind of TLB bug (AMD Phenom X4 9600).
>>     
>
> Oh, haha, yeah, that tlb erratum was a nasty one... Prices on the 9x00 
> series Phenom all dropped quite a bit after that one was discovered, and 
> they were quickly replaced by 9x50 Phenoms, but they still sold the ones 
> already out to resellers... (iirc).
>
> --jarod
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>   

What makes it painful is that you read their "warranty" and it 
supposedly covers all defects yet you can't talk to them or otherwise 
reach them so their warranty is impossible to engage.  I recall that 
Intel years ago had a divide bug (lookup table missing data) and Intel 
took quite a bit of heat for not taking care of the problem for maybe a 
week. The CEO then caved and Intel set aside something like $500 million 
to cover the cost of replacing the bad chips. As it turned out most 
customers didn't return the processors because it could easily be fixed 
with a firmware patch. AMD didn't come close to what Intel did for their 
customers.

-Alex

P.S. There's a nice Wikipedia article about the Intel bug here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug