2.2. Minimum Hardware Requirements

2.2. Minimum Hardware Requirements
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The hardware requirements to install FreeBSD vary by architecture. Hardware architectures and devices supported by a FreeBSD release are listed on the FreeBSD Release Information page. The FreeBSD download page also has recommendations for choosing the correct image for different architectures.

A FreeBSD installation requires a minimum of 96 MB of RAM and 1.5 GB of free hard drive space. However, such small amounts of memory and disk space are really only suitable for custom applications like embedded appliances. General-purpose desktop systems need more resources. 2-4 GB RAM and at least 8 GB hard drive space is a good starting point.

These are the processor requirements for each architecture:

amd64

This is the most common desktop and laptop processor type, used in most modern systems. Intel® calls it Intel64. Other manufacturers sometimes call it x86-64.

Examples of amd64 compatible processors include: AMD Athlon™64, AMD Opteron™, multi-core Intel® Xeon™, and Intel® Core™ 2 and later processors.

i386

Older desktops and laptops often use this 32-bit, x86 architecture.

Almost all i386-compatible processors with a floating point unit are supported. All Intel® processors 486 or higher are supported.

FreeBSD will take advantage of Physical Address Extensions (PAE) support on CPUs with this feature. A kernel with the PAE feature enabled will detect memory above 4 GB and allow it to be used by the system. However, using PAE places constraints on device drivers and other features of FreeBSD. Refer to pae(4) for details.

ia64

Currently supported processors are the Itanium® and the Itanium® 2. Supported chipsets include the HP zx1, Intel® 460GX, and Intel® E8870. Both Uniprocessor (UP) and Symmetric Multi-processor (SMP) configurations are supported.

powerpc

All New World ROM Apple® Mac® systems with built-in USB are supported. SMP is supported on machines with multiple CPUs.

A 32-bit kernel can only use the first 2 GB of RAM.

sparc64

Systems supported by FreeBSD/sparc64 are listed at the FreeBSD/sparc64 Project.

SMP is supported on all systems with more than 1 processor. A dedicated disk is required as it is not possible to share a disk with another operating system at this time.