10 Jun
2003
10 Jun
'03
3:37 a.m.
On Tue, 2003-06-10 at 11:45, Peter Groves wrote:
I'm planning on building a new machine and would
like some advice. Right
now I think the main application of it's "power" will be in
recording/mixing in linux. People have been saying that a dual processor
is something to consider,
Worth it if you can afford the $$ it means that while doing heavy audio
processing your X windows will run cleaner and resources can be
designated across the processors.
but there's currently a problem: the amd
athlon's that would be at my price point (the 2600 - 2800's) have no
dual processor motherboard support, and it looks like there won't be any
b/c companies are just going to go straight to supporting the
new 64-bit opterons (which aren't in my price range). So if anyone can
comment on any of the following things, it would really help me out.
Front Side Bus speed: how important is this for recording? i could just
get two bargain athlon's with a slower FSB, would that work?
As audio is real-time a faster FSB is better, the reason being you want
to be able to push as much through the processor as you can in one go.
(i.e. more tracks or plugins)
Would any of the sound apps out there, or even linux in general, make
any use of a 64 bit opteron anytime soon? (no i won't have more than 4GB
of memory)
Can't answer that with expertise but as I understand if you compile
software from source as 64 bit then it will be 64 bit software (someone
with more knowledge please correct me if I am wrong). Hence you may
benefit if you are compiling your kernel and main software from source.
Hyperthreading - the new fancy P4's have it. Does
it do anything on
linux? I saw some benchmarks where it really sped up video encoding (on
windows), how similar to sound processing is this?
Linux is a highly threaded OS and so is most of the software, this
should in theory provide benefits.
In general, intel chips seem to do better in benchmarks on floating
point stuff (games and video) while amd's do better on integer heavy
apps (office software). I would think that sound stuff would therefore
run better on intel's but lots of sound people say they prefer amd's.
Any reason for this?
Audio is heavy on floating point calculation, yet I've also seen reports
that the newer AMD's may actually be better on the FPU stuff, of course
that is all hearsay.
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)
Basically any current processor on the market will handle this
requirement.. However the more powerful the processor the more you can
do, this may be playback and recording of more tracks, but really what
most people need extra power for is to run more plugins simultaneously.
The speed of your HD is also a critical factor but basically anything
from UDMA66 drive (now obsolete) and up will handle a sufficiently
large number of tracks. If you are building a system now then go with a
Serial ATA drive and you can't go wrong.
I personally prefer the current Intel chips because they run at a cooler
temperature so the fans required are less noisy... this was a big factor
in selecting my current PC The less background noise in an audio
environment the better, and even with a P4 I'm still looking at ways of
making a quieter case. . :))))
Remember though whatever you buy today will be obsolete tomorrow.
thanks for any help, i'd be happy if i got responses to only a few of
these questions.
I hope this has been of benefit and happy building.
Allan
Peter