20 May
2007
20 May
'07
1:29 p.m.
Hi all,
I'm thinking of building a new workstation, aiming for a (very) low price and decent
performance. So far, I have acquired an Athlon64 3200 and 2Gb of RAM, and bought an NVidia
NForce4 board and Antec power supply on eBay. I've spent just under £35 Sterling so
far!
I already have a couple of second-hand RME cards - a DIGI96/8 PAD and DIGI9636, which set
me back £77 between them.
So, I still need some media to boot from, and a graphics card - which must be PCI
Express.
I'm interested in using a CompactFlash-to-SATA adapter, and booting from a CF card.
Does anyone know what the speed/reliability would be like? I imagine/hope that I'd be
able to fit everything I need for a desktop and audio workstation onto 4GB or so? I can do
without full-blown KDE or GNOME.
I'll probably get a SATA RAID card, and a couple of drives later for file storage.
Finally, the graphics card... What do you recommend? Is there anything to avoid? I'd
much rather use open source drivers, but don't really have enough money to get a
Matrox PCI-E card at the moment.
Thanks for any advice,
Michael Nelson
--
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20 May
20 May
1:42 p.m.
Michael Nelson wrote:
Finally, the graphics card... What do you recommend? Is
there anything to avoid? I'd much rather use open source drivers, but don't really
have enough money to get a Matrox PCI-E card at the moment.
Hi Michael:
Your system is similar to one I built a few months ago. Re: the graphics
card, one thing to bear in mind is that the fans on those cards can be
loud, even in an Antec case. I now have a fanless nVidia card in my
machine, it works fine with either the kernel module or nVidia's binary
driver, and it's *quiet*.
Best,
dp
21 May
21 May
1:39 p.m.
Dave Phillips wrote:
Michael Nelson wrote:
Thanks for the advice Dave.
I have been hoping to find something fanless on eBay UK. I was mainly
hoping to get some reassurance that drivers are ok on modern(ish) ATI
and nVidia cards. I'll keep looking, and wait until a bargain comes along.
On a slightly different note - are there any cards which have good 3d
performance with open drivers? I probably won't use it yet, but it would
be nice to know about...
Actually, I still (sort of) need a case as well. It's just an Antec
power supply I have at the moment. I do have a spare second-hand ATX
rack case at my parents' house. Next time I visit I'll probably collect
it and try to insulate it carefully.
Thanks
Michael
Finally, the graphics card... What do you
recommend? Is there
anything to avoid? I'd much rather use open source drivers, but don't
really have enough money to get a Matrox PCI-E card at the moment.
Hi Michael:
Your system is similar to one I built a few months ago. Re: the
graphics card, one thing to bear in mind is that the fans on those
cards can be loud, even in an Antec case. I now have a fanless nVidia
card in my machine, it works fine with either the kernel module or
nVidia's binary driver, and it's *quiet*. 
24 May
24 May
6:35 p.m.
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 04:39:31PM +0100, Michael TD Nelson wrote:
I have been hoping to find something fanless on eBay
UK. I was mainly
hoping to get some reassurance that drivers are ok on modern(ish) ATI
and nVidia cards. I'll keep looking, and wait until a bargain comes along.
I wouldn't call the opensource drivers OKish for Nvidia.
I think your best best for a PCI-E card is somewhere from a ATI x300 to
ATI x850. Stay away from X1000 or newer.
On a slightly different note - are there any cards
which have good 3d
performance with open drivers? I probably won't use it yet, but it would
be nice to know about...
The ATI X300 to X850 range are reasonably decent using the open source
ATI drivers. That range of cards is probably the best graphics for a
completely open source linux machine. I would say that they are easily
faster than the Intel 965 graphics at this time. Long term, the Intel
graphics may end up being a better choice, but for now I think that the
slightly older ATI is best.
7:21 p.m.
On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 04:27:37PM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 04:39:31PM +0100, Michael TD
Nelson wrote:
Depends what's OK for the user. 3d sucks, it's true. But by default I
start X with the kernel (nv) driver. For 2d usage -- ie. 99% of what
I do on a daily basis -- it works great.
When I want 3d acceleration, I quit X and restart with the binary
driver.
For people who regularly use 3d, this would be a PITA, but all I use
it for is gaming - and I don't multitask while gaming :)
To make this work, my xorg.conf has two Device sections, which are
referred to by two Screen sections, which in turn are referred to by
two ServerLayout sections. Then depending on what I want, I can do:
startx -- -layout name_of_layout
or
startx -- -screen name_of_screen
And I can write scripts like:
#!/bin/sh
xinit /home/pw/.Xclients-Quake3 -- -screen quake3
--
Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com
I have been hoping to find something fanless on
eBay UK. I was mainly
hoping to get some reassurance that drivers are ok on modern(ish) ATI
and nVidia cards. I'll keep looking, and wait until a bargain comes along.
I wouldn't call the opensource drivers OKish for Nvidia.
4 Jun
4 Jun
6:12 p.m.
Joshua Boyd wrote:
The ATI X300 to X850 range are reasonably decent using
the open source
ATI drivers. That range of cards is probably the best graphics for a
completely open source linux machine. I would say that they are easily
faster than the Intel 965 graphics at this time. Long term, the Intel
graphics may end up being a better choice, but for now I think that the
slightly older ATI is best.
Thanks everyone, for all your advice.
I have just bought a Hewlett Packard branded X300 on eBay - I have been
watching all the PCI-E cards for a few days, and that was the first
bargain to turn up (£10.50 Sterling including delivery, if anyone is
interested). It's small and fanless, which suits me.
When it arrives I can test the motherboard, CPU, RAM and power supply!
Next item on the list is bootable media... Probably a pair of mirrored
SATA drives. They'll almost certainly be the most expensive component in
the machine.
Thanks
Michael
20 May
20 May
9:39 p.m.
Michael Nelson wrote:
I'm interested in using a CompactFlash-to-SATA
adapter, and booting
from a CF card. Does anyone know what the speed/reliability would be
like?
I think it would be pretty slow - my CF cards seem to give only
5-6MB/sec transfer. Even my slowest hard drives run a LOT faster than that.
Plus - CF has a limited lifespan when it comes to writing to the card.
I'd suggest a bootable Live Linux DVD, or just use a hard drive.
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
21 May
21 May
1:35 p.m.
david wrote:
Michael Nelson wrote:
Ok, if
it's that slow, then I'll probably just get a couple of extra
SATA drives. I was just hoping that something with no mechanical
parts.would be quick and reliable. If anyone has any other ideas, then
please let me know!
Thanks
Michael
I'm interested in using a
CompactFlash-to-SATA adapter, and booting
from a CF card. Does anyone know what the speed/reliability would be
like?
I think it would be pretty slow - my CF cards seem to give only
5-6MB/sec transfer. Even my slowest hard drives run a LOT faster than
that.
Plus - CF has a limited lifespan when it comes to writing to the card. 
5:54 p.m.
On Monday 21 May 2007, david wrote:
Michael Nelson wrote:
The new Samsung NSSD achieve much better performance: read=53MB/s,
write=30MB/s with 0.24ms access time.
<http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/FlashSSD/ModuleType.htm>
I'm interested in using a
CompactFlash-to-SATA adapter, and booting
from a CF card. Does anyone know what the speed/reliability would
be like?
I think it would be pretty slow - my CF cards seem to give only
5-6MB/sec transfer. Even my slowest hard drives run a LOT faster than
that. Plus - CF has a limited lifespan when it comes to
writing to the
card.
Modern SSD all use Wear Leveling to improve the lifespan, to get
actually better results than hard disks now.
The only drawback to SSD is the price: 600EUR for 32GB is not really
cheap.
-a.
22 May
22 May
4:56 a.m.
Alexandre DENIS wrote:
At least that's the claim. We'll see! In my relatively short (5 years)
use of assorted solid state memory - I've had one CF card fail and one
hard drive fail. The hard drive was about 8 years of old and had been
very heavily used during its lifetime. The CF card wasn't even a year
old ...
On Monday 21 May 2007, david wrote:
Yes, SD is faster than CF.
Michael Nelson wrote:
The new Samsung NSSD achieve much better performance: read=53MB/s,
write=30MB/s with 0.24ms access time.
<http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/FlashSSD/ModuleType.htm> I'm interested in using a
CompactFlash-to-SATA adapter, and booting
from a CF card. Does anyone know what the speed/reliability would
be like?
I think it would be pretty slow - my CF cards seem to give only
5-6MB/sec transfer. Even my slowest hard drives run a LOT faster than
that. Plus - CF has
a limited lifespan when it comes to writing to the
card.
Modern SSD all use Wear Leveling to improve the lifespan, to get
actually better results than hard disks now. The only drawback to SSD is the price: 600EUR for 32GB
is not really
cheap.
No, it's not! I think a hard drive is the most cost-effective choice.
What I like about the solid state devices is that they're physically
very tough - almost indestructible.
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
24 May
24 May
7:08 p.m.
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 08:56:08PM -1000, david wrote:
At least that's the claim. We'll see! In my relatively short (5 years)
use of assorted solid state memory - I've had one CF card fail and one
hard drive fail. The hard drive was about 8 years of old and had been
very heavily used during its lifetime. The CF card wasn't even a year
old ...
I've been using CF cards for boot disks on linux for more than two years
without issue. The systems are tuned to minimize writes to the CF, but
they are still mostly normal Ubuntu server installs.
Further CF continues to improve. The new stuff good for 50,000,000
writes to each block isn't that old yet. And like harddrives, video
cards, sound cards, etc, it is always possible for CF to fail before it
is actually worn out.
Alexandre DENIS wrote:
That new Samsun FlashSSD isn't SD though. It is NAND chips with a
microcontroller pretending to be IDE. That basically describes a modern
CF card. While CF originally used NOR flash, it switched to
cheaper/faster NAND flash some time ago. Since CF cards had to have an
adapter chip to emulate IDE anyway, they can use whatever they want for
flash on the other side.
On Monday 21 May 2007, david wrote:
Yes, SD is faster than CF. Michael Nelson wrote:
The new Samsung NSSD achieve much better performance: read=53MB/s,
write=30MB/s with 0.24ms access time.
<http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/FlashSSD/ModuleType.htm> I'm interested in using a CompactFlash-to-SATA
adapter, and booting
from a CF card. Does anyone know what the speed/reliability would
be like?
I think it would be pretty slow - my CF cards seem to give only
5-6MB/sec transfer. Even my slowest hard drives run a LOT faster than
that. Plus - CF has a limited lifespan when it comes to
writing to the
card.
Modern SSD all use Wear Leveling to improve the lifespan, to get
actually better results than hard disks now.
6:55 p.m.
On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 01:39:22PM -1000, david wrote:
Michael Nelson wrote:
There is something strange with compact flash on IDE on linux. I've
seen speed problems with several brands, but I'm going to talk
specifically about kingston since I have detailed data sheets for their
CF cards. Standard cards get about 5MB/sec write speed. This is about
what speed they are supposed to get. However, when I upgrade to "100x"
cards, my speed actually starts going down and there are kernel errors
printed about accessing the flash. According to Kingston data sheets,
these "100x" cards should be getting about 16MB/sec writes, which is
vaguely in the ball park of IDE, and plenty adequate for most audio
work.
I'm interested in using a CompactFlash-to-SATA
adapter, and booting
from a CF card. Does anyone know what the speed/reliability would be
like?
I think it would be pretty slow - my CF cards seem to give only
5-6MB/sec transfer. Even my slowest hard drives run a LOT faster than that. Plus - CF has a limited lifespan when it comes to
writing to the card.
I'd suggest a bootable Live Linux DVD, or just use a hard drive.
I suspect that a bootable live dvd is going to have an even worse life
span. And if you can live with the boot media be read only, then why
not make the boot CF card read only? Do any actual recording to either
a second CF card or a USB memory stick or something.
Newer flash chips have radically longer life spans (50 million writes
per cell instead of 1 million, and the ability to remap cells that have
been written to too many times).
25 May
25 May
2:46 a.m.
Joshua Boyd wrote:
On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 01:39:22PM -1000, david
wrote:
I use a 50x CF from Kingston without any problems, but I don't write to
it from my computer. I only use the computer to read photos from it.
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
Michael Nelson wrote:
There is something strange with compact flash on IDE on linux. I've
seen speed problems with several brands, but I'm going to talk
specifically about kingston since I have detailed data sheets for their
CF cards. Standard cards get about 5MB/sec write speed. This is about
what speed they are supposed to get. However, when I upgrade to "100x"
cards, my speed actually starts going down and there are kernel errors
printed about accessing the flash. According to Kingston data sheets,
these "100x" cards should be getting about 16MB/sec writes, which is
vaguely in the ball park of IDE, and plenty adequate for most audio
work. I'm interested in using a
CompactFlash-to-SATA adapter, and booting
from a CF card. Does anyone know what the speed/reliability would be
like?
I think it would be pretty slow - my CF cards seem to give only
5-6MB/sec transfer. Even my slowest hard drives run a LOT faster than that. 
24 May
24 May
8:24 p.m.
Michael Nelson wrote:
Finally, the graphics card... What do you recommend? Is there anything to avoid? I'd
much rather use open source drivers, but don't really have enough money to get a
Matrox PCI-E card at the moment.
Cheap fanless NVidia. Actually, the fanless NVidia cards tend to use
older chips, so they are typically cheaper.
--
Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/
6415
days inactive
6430
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
13 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Alexandre DENIS -
Dave Phillips -
david -
Florin Andrei -
Joshua Boyd -
Michael Nelson -
Michael TD Nelson
-
Paul Winkler