[PlanetCCRMA] Re: New PC - Athlon 64

[Jan Depner]

On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 11:51 -0600, Chris Synan wrote:
> I wanted to weigh in on the chip discussion, having just upgraded my 
> machine to Athlon 64 4400 x2 -- running PlanetCCRMA 32 bit SMP.
> 

    Thanks for the feedback.  Between you and Mark I feel pretty
comfortable with the decision.  I just ordered the box so I guess I'll
know in a few days whether it was a good choice or not.


> It runs very solid and very fast.  Before my upgrade (single athlon 
> 1800), jack, ardour + jamin would peg my CPU at 100% and start dropping 
> frames.  Now under the same load both CPU's are 15% or less.  I really 
> believe I made the right purchase.
> 
> I researched this decision for a long time and decided that although 
> there are 64 bit multimedia distros (64 studio etc) I will wait for 
> CCRMA to go 64 bit.  Besides, seems to me that the main benefit of 64 
> bit is the ability to access memory >4GB.  I dont have that much memory 
> anyway.  On the other hand, the main benefit of dual core is that you 
> can spin off threads to other CPU to double processing bandwidth -- IF 
> the apps are multithreaded.  AFAIK Ardour is multithreaded, and best I 
> can tell JAMIN is as well.

    Yep.  The DSP code and the JACK code run in separate threads.

>   So for me there was a huge incentive to go 
> dual core.  A lot of games are not multithreaded so you wont see quite 
> as much benefit there, although there is still some benefit because the 
> system bg processes can use one CPU while your game uses the other.
> 
> Best of luck, and thanks so much to Fernando and CCRMA!!!
> 

    Couldn't agree more!


-- 
Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner
The Fuzzy Dice
http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html


"As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be 
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Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of 
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