[linux-audio-user] moterhboard and sound card advise

[Malcolm Baldridge]

> As this machine is going to spend most of it's time doing DSP, I figured
> more and high speed RAM is good and hence a faster FSB which I think
> means a faster processor as well, specially at 400Mhz for the FSB but
> is it worth it? Does it make a difference?

Well, if you can build your modules yourself or get Pentium-4 builds of your
software, the Pentium4 offers a ferocious DSP bang for the buck, even older
versions like the Rev-A Northwoods (400-533 FSB).

They offer SSE + SSE2 which if used to build your effects modules, can
really boost the DSP performance a significant amount.

AthlonXPs only offer SSE (SSE1).

Modern GCC's (>= 3.3) offer fairly good Pentium4 code generation quality,
but for real OOMPH! in your binaries, the Intel C compiler is the way to
performance nirvana.

gcc options as a starting point:

CFLAGS='-O2 -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -march=pentium4 -mcpu=pentium4 \
-fomit-frame-pointer -s' CXXFLAGS='-O2 -mfpmath=sse -msse2 \
-march=pentium4 -mcpu=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -s' ./configure blah..

=MB=
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