On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 20:17, Ingo Scherzinger <ingo@miamiwave.com> wrote:
Hi,

does anybody know which would be the most efficient kernel for low latency
with Ubuntu Studio on Lucid?

- generic
- generic-pae
- realime

(BTW I am using Pd-extended 0.42.5 on an Athlon II X2 dual core with one
audio patch and one separate Gem patch connected with netsend / netreceive)

I am not sure if the realtime kernel is any more optimized than the regular
Ubuntu Studio generic kernel since it hasn't been updated in a while.
Can the generic-pae kernel actually slow down Pd or is this more of a
theoretical additional delay in addressing the extended memory?
I am using 4GB of ram but could live with 3.2GB if the non pae kernel is
faster.

I have made the experience that I need the proprietary ATI graphic drivers
for smooth audio playback. I'm not sure if these drivers can interfere with
the realtime kernel and make it even less efficient than the generic kernel.

It takes a lot of time to actually try out all of these options. So, any
experience would be greatly appreciated!

Ingo


Just my 2 cents - I use plain Ubuntu 64 (on an Opteron single core) and the realtime kernel seems to be faster even though it has not been updated for some time. I guess most of the kernel updates are driver related, and optimisation related updates are rare, but I may be completely wrong. For driver related updates - if your hardware works alrite, you may not need them at all. They are mostly adding support for new hardware.
Anyway why not install all the kernels you are interested in, and benchmark them? Linux is so cool to allow this... in the worst case you have to reinstall your propritery video driver (if any) when you switch kernels, but those 2 minutes must be justified by benchmarking. (I have Nvidia and the proprietary driver needs some tweaking before it can be installed on the realtime kernel, but it still takes less than 2 minutes...)
 
Andras