[PD] BEST HARDWARE COMPONENTS FOR PD ON LINUX?

[cgc]

On Jan 13, 2004, at 8:14 AM, <rscanning at eircom.net> wrote:
> processors: intel or amd - pentuim or athlon, celron etc.?

Athlons seem to be quite good at single precision floating point which 
is was Pd audio uses, but I've found them less effective for video 
processing.  I would go for a CPU over 2 Ghz with at least 512K L2 
cache, SSE support and the fastest FSB available - like 800Mhz vs 533 
Mhz for the P4.

You don't need anything 64 bit for audio or video at this point, plus 
most of those chips are very pricey and untested.  You could hold out 
for the PPC 970 based systems later this year.  3rd party chipset 
makers already offer eval boards.

> is the difference between a 2.6mhz and 3mhz worth the extra 100 euros ?

Maybe if the 3 ghz has an 800 mhz bus and the 2.6 had a 533 mhz FSB, 
but both being the same wouldn't make a whole heck of a lot of 
difference.

> which motherboard brand: gigabyte?

Find one with dual channel DDR support.  This will feed the higher 
clocked P4 busses much better than a single channel one.  And try and 
get as many features like ethernet and firewire/usb 2 built in.

If you were in the states, then I would recommend Tyan as their tech 
support is based here and very good.

> graphics card - i'm thinking about an ati 9800 all in wonder pro? - is 
> this overkill? maybe a 9700 or 9600 would be just as good?

The 9800 is total overkill for GEM, and so is the 9600 since we haven't 
added support for most of the advanced features you pay for in those 
GPUs.  That's pretty much the case for all software outside of high end 
apps like Maya at the moment, so you can either save money now or spend 
more as an 'investment' for future possibilities.

I would avoid the GeForce FX 5200 and 5600 as they have really poor 
performance compared to other current cards.  You might find a deal on 
the 5700 or 5900 as Nvidia are trying to move those by cutting prices.

> what type of harddrive - Seagate Baracuda look good?

I like them quite a bit.  Extremely quiet, pretty good performance, and 
no issues so far (knock on wood).

cgc

> noise reduction systems / watercooled processors - good idea / bad 
> idea?
>
> prebuilt systems? bad idea? any exceptions?
>
> thanks,
>
> rob canning
> www.robcanning.utvinternet.com
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>
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