On Sun, 9 Jul 2006 16:57:43 +0200
Frank Barknecht <fbar(a)footils.org> wrote:
Hallo,
oz hat gesagt: // oz wrote:
I have sympathy for a new notebook with AMD
Turion 64 X2 dual-core
cpu. It would open some new possibilities, like virtualization
(pacifica, xen etc.), pure AMD64 Debian arch, other 32-bit OS' and -
and that is the question - good realtime-audio performance?
I would say be careful with AMD laptops and Linux. Intel machines tend
to be much better supported because there are open source drivers for
the other parts inside these machines like WLAN, gfx card (if it's
Intel) etc. while AMD laptops often use NVidia chipsets and gfx cards
or similar stuff by ATi for which you need to install binary drivers
sometimes, that may mess up other things like power management in
strange ways. 64bit isn't that important for audio anyways. Getting a
laptop to run flawlessly is hard enough, don't make it harder on
yourself by buying hardware without open source drivers.
Thanks. I agree in general, but it's a dilemma - feed opportunistic
companies like ati or feed quasi-monopols like intel. :-/
So the only thing, that's sure at the moment, is that I choose a AMD
Dual-Core for my next computer. And one of its OS' (besides other
multi-boots) will be a dedicated 32-bit linux for audio purposes.
Because dual-core Turions are very recent, there seems to be not much
experience with latencies and realtime-kernels at the moment. We'll
see. In reality, I only found one (o-n-e) laptop at the moment, that
could work for me (Asus A6T, nvidia/realtek based). At the same time I
know, its WLAN-card (Airgo) is not supported. The problem you
mentioned. A deal-breaker would be, if dual-cores don't work well
with realtime-audio.
Gruss,
Oliver