On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 07:13, Ian Smith-Heisters wrote:
Does having several computers give any actual power benefit over one behemoth.
In general I would say yes (assuming the work can be distributed evenly). Multiple systems means you have duplication of more system components such as L1/L2 cache, FSB, drive controllers. However, you pay for the extra hardware.
Resource contention for L1/L2 cache can be a significant bottleneck. Unfortunately its not easy to analyze... Proper use of SSE can mitigate the problem with streaming media applications by explicitly handling transient data. Not sure how well PD/Gem/etc will handle this.
Performance wise, how would it compare to run GEM doing (for example) two 3D animations, one using video capture from a webcam on an AMD Barton 2.2GHz (XP3200+) with a gig of ram and an ATI 9800...
Also I would consider the relevance of graphics acceleration to the task. Some things benefit greatly from the GPU, others do not, such as particle systems.
What situations have you found noise to be a big problem in, and in what situations has it been more important to have small form factor (as the two seem to be mutually exclusive).
Here is a system which I have used which is small, reasonably quiet and reasonably priced:
http://www.emaxasp.com/CBS/details.asp?item=SAMBA1845
I don't think its any louder than my laptop and is small enough to fit in a backpack.