Re: 2.6.15-rc1 - NForce4 PCI-E agpgart support?

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On 11/16/05, Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 11:54 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
> > > The alternative is ATI's proprietary driver which probably already supports
> > > your card.
> >
> > Thanks. I'll see if this old guitar player can get all of that done.
>
> Mark,
>
> You should really decide whether you're more interested in 100% xrun
> free audio performance OR better video performance and pursue one or the
> other - if you try to work on these in parallel you'll find it's one
> step forward, two steps back.  There have been many cases in the past
> where video drivers ended up doing evil things that would ruin reliable
> audio performance to get 0.1% better numbers on some Windows benchmark,
> then the same bad behavior got ported over to Linux.  I'd be especially
> cautious with the Radeon driver as much of it seems to be reverse
> engineered.  And if you read the "X spinning in the kernel" thread you
> see that apparently these GPUs can "crash" (!) in which case you seem to
> be screwed.
>
> Lee

Lee,
   I've been reading that thread with interest. Thanks.

   Also, at this point I have no reason to believe that I'm not 100%
xrun free with the right set of apps, meaning I cannot really say any
xrun I see today is kernel induced. (They may be...I just cannot say
that.) For instance, I've yet to see an xrun in days of using Ardour
and running Jack from a terminal. However running Jack from QJC and
using Aqualung results in one or two every few days. This is a low
level issue from my perspective.

   My interest is, in general, audio only. However, on the odd
afternoon I have no qualms about rebooting into a different kernel or
a different video driver that might support a bit of game playing.
That's all that's going on here. Someone recently said there might be
PCI Express support in 2.6.15 so I was just looking.

   That said, over the last couple of years I have done a couple of
jobs that are sound track related. (Pro Tools, Vegas, etc. under XP)
I'm keeping my eyes open for a tool set that might allow me a similar
opportunity one of these days under Linux. (No rush at all)

   Note: It may not be obvious, but I'm young(-ish), retired, and
pretty much get to do what I want now. The only thing that stops me
from doing this on two machines is space and noise concerns.

   Thanks for all your inputs. You've been a great help.

cheers,
Mark