I'm thinking about assembling a new system for Pure Data. What processor
would you recommend? I was thinking about a P4 3.0 ghz with 800 FSB, or
athlon 3200 or 64 3200. it seems the 64 will just run in emulation mode for
now, until pd is rewritten (if ever) for the 64 bit machines. I heard the P4s
have really good memory bandwidth, but that the athlons can be just as fast.
any preferences?
===== Original Message From chris clepper cgc@humboldtblvd.com =====
On Sep 6, 2004, at 7:38 PM, thewade wrote:
int=16bits
Integers are 32 bits on 32 bit machines. A short would be 16 bits. Most machines bit depth is determined by the actual size of the registers used for processing, and most of the time that's only for integers. Common desktop CPUs have had 64 bit floating point units and 128 bit vector units for some time now.
There might in the future be something like write combining where two sets of 32 bit values are combined, as it takes just one cpu cycle to move 64 bits as opposed to two cycles for normal x86 machines.
By 'move' do you mean process calculations on the CPU? You would be describing SIMD and really bad MMX style SIMD at that. Modern CPUs have 128 bit wide vector units like Altivec and SSE which are fantastic if actually used.
If you mean 'move' as in load into the CPU from a memory location then that's already covered as most CPUs fetch at least 64 bits of data (8 bytes) or more at once. This has both good implications for streaming media like video and not so good implications for pure random access functions like databases.
Thats what Im hopeing for. Id really like to be able to do some serious synthsis while doing hardcore realtime video processing using Gem.
I can do one or the other with my old laptop... Just not both. Too many dropouts.
You need more processors pure and simple. It's just not a realistic expectation to have two completely separate time intensive and sensitive tasks running on the same physical CPU. Dual CPUs or better yet multiple machines solve your problem today.
cgc
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On Sep 6, 2004, at 8:51 PM, ba wrote:
I'm thinking about assembling a new system for Pure Data. What processor would you recommend? I was thinking about a P4 3.0 ghz with 800 FSB, or athlon 3200 or 64 3200. it seems the 64 will just run in emulation mode for now, until pd is rewritten (if ever) for the 64 bit machines. I heard the P4s have really good memory bandwidth, but that the athlons can be just as fast. any preferences?
The CPU two speeds down from the top is usually about the best price/performance from Intel, so something like an 800Mhz FSB 2.8 or 3.0 Ghz would be there I guess. Avoid anything with the word 'EXTREME' in the actual CPU name like the plague. If the comparable 64 bit AMD is in the ballpark then consider that - although I hear there are problems with SSE2 on AMD64 chips.
Right now there are three decent choices offered by AMD, IBM and Intel. Personally, I would go with the G5/PPC 970 because I can write the best code for it (and given the best code it is probably the flat out fastest for streaming data processing), but take your pick. You can get a really killer dual CPU for around $2k no matter which you choose, although of course the Wintel world offers more options for hardware.
I'll cover this one too while I'm thinking about CPUs:
now i have a pentium 4 , 2.6 and 512 ram, and i feel limited , i cant work very compex patches ..... the salesman told me pentium m is faster than pentium 4 but im not sure
Clock for clock the M is indeed superior to the P4, but look at the disparity between the maximum clock rates for each. The highest clocked P4 is still faster than the highest Hz M, although the P4 won't get much faster as it's development has come to an end. The M and it's derivatives might well pass the P4's raw clock speed at some point.
Do either of you require further in depth technical analysis?
cgc