[linux-audio-user] Processor Recommendation

Austin aacton at yorku.ca
Tue Jun 10 11:13:00 EDT 2003


On 2003.06.09 21:45, Peter Groves wrote:
> How fast does a system really need to be before it can handle recording
> with practically no limits? (let's say fewer than 10 tracks at a time
> such as with a delta1010)

I'm no expert, but here's my experience.

I built a new machine about a year ago.  Asus A7M266-D motherboard (with CMI 
sound), dual Athlon XP 1900, and 512 MB DDR ram.  I also added a 60MB 7200 RPM 
HD, and an NVidia GForce2.  The results are mixed...

For day-to-day operations it AMAZING.  Blistering fast.  I bought it for 
scientific calculations... both proc's running 100% for hours.  In that regard 
everything worked as expected, and FAST.  Running many apps at a time is 
flawless, and most proc-heavy apps seem to be threaded in Linux.

The bad newes are: cooling, and multimedia.

The cooling requirements are INSANE.  I had a big heatsinc and AMD fan on each 
proc.  It overheated (I call that over 60oC) fast.  I added a case fan, and it 
would run fine until I did heavy calculations.  So I had to add TWO more case 
fans.  Now I've got FIVE total fans, screaming away in my office 
twentyfour-seven.  I think the small size case might be to blame, because 
removing the cover seems to help, but who wants a monster-tower on their desk?

Multimedia performance has been a bit diappointing too.  I'm not sure whether 
to blame the hardware or the software though, but it's consistenly worse 
performance than I expect.  Even with a lowlat setup, I can't record many 
tracks without xruns.  I'd say 4 to 6 are the max.  Also, I can't capture and 
encode video at full size, only very small size frames.  As I said, this could 
be due to the current state of Linux A/V software, or some setup problems on 
my part, but I'd expect more out of this monster, especially since I used to 
record several tracks of audio on my PIII-500 without problems.  Non-realtime 
multimedia performance is amazing though... graphic rendering, transcoding, 
effects processing are all blazingly fast in NON-realtime.

Hope that helps a bit.
Austin

-- 
                         Austin Acton Hon.B.Sc.
              Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant
            Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto
              MandrakeClub Volunteer (www.mandrakeclub.com)
                      homepage: www.groundstate.ca



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