[PlanetCCRMA] Re: New PC - Athlon 64

[Chris Synan]

I wanted to weigh in on the chip discussion, having just upgraded my 
machine to Athlon 64 4400 x2 -- running PlanetCCRMA 32 bit SMP.

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.  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!!!