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
