[LAU] New Computer - Wooo!

[Folderol]

Someone asked about A series AMD machines a while ago. I kept quiet because I
was in the process of getting one. Here is the spec:

MBO	ASUS® F2A55-M LE
CPU	AMD A8-5600K Quad Core APU (3.6GHz) & Radeon™ HD 7560D Graphics
MEM	4GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz
SDA	120GB INTEL® 330 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s	'/' & /home'
SDB	180GB INTEL® 330 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s	'/audio' & '/source'

I've now spent a few days getting it exactly as I want it. I made very few BIOS
changes. I disabled serial and parallel ports (the machine doesn't have them
anyway) and set the CPU to 'performance'. Initially I disabled the on-board
sound as I'm using my trusty 2496. But I got occasional boot oddities so
re-enabled it.

I installed a minimal debian-squeeze without any problems at all, then just
added the software I wanted. This was a bit harder than I expected as my notes
from last time were not complete, and going from Linux 2.6 to 3.1 meant there
were subtle differences, especially with stuff I had to compile.

The machine is very, very responsive and almost completely silent. The PSU has
a slow running 120mm fan and the cooler on the CPU looks like something from a
space lab!

With the stock 3.1 kernel I'm running at a latency of 5.8mS with no x-runs even
when going full steam on Rosegarden (with audio tracks) and Yoshimi. Sequencer
+ synth playing of complex material that used to peak at around 70% total
processor, now peaks at around 20%!

I did try the 3.2 kernel, both stock and RT but both of these actually
performed far worse, and I had to run with a latency of 23.2mS to get clear of
x-runs.

My old computer has been re-purposed as a (rather fast) office machine, so that
involved a lot of file swapping and checking that nothing was missed.


Now, I suppose I'd better get on and compose some music :)


-- 
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.