Topic by groovy

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  • groovy
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  • Registered: 12-06-2009
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Topic: Notebook with AMD E-350 CPU and 64-bit Linux

Hello,

I haven't been in the forum for months but now I have a new, inexpensive notebook and maybe it is interesting for someone, how it works.

The notebook is a low budget HP 635, which costs 270 EUR where I live. It has a true dual-core AMD E-350 CPU with 64-bit support, 1.6 GHz and 4 GB RAM.

I installed my preferred Linux-Distribution Debian/wheezy with AMD64 architecture. In new distributions one can select a realtime-kernel now, which is a great progress (no compilation needed anymore)! The kernel I'm now running is Linux version 3.2.0-1-rt-amd64.

The installed sound-system is just plain alsa (no additional jackd or sound-servers) and the mixer is kmix (I have a KDE4 desktop). The onboard soundcard for play is a Realtek ALC270 and provides Intel HDA standards.

I installed the 64-bit trial version of Pianoteq v3.6.8. (pianoteq_linux_trial_x64.zip).

The only realtime-optimizations I did so far are that from Piantoteq's README_LINUX.txt:

* In /etc/security/limits.conf
     @audio - rtprio 90
     @audio - nice -10
     @audio - memlock 500000

* Nailing both cpu-cores to max. cpufreq:
     cpufreq-set -c 0 -g performance
     cpufreq-set -c 1 -g performance

With an USB-attached midi-interface and my keyboard I'm playing without any glitches at 44100 Hz, buffersize 64 and polyphony 48 at the moment. Big thanks to Pianoteq!

- groovy

Reply by JerryKnight

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  • JerryKnight
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  • Registered: 05-05-2009
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Re: Notebook with AMD E-350 CPU and 64-bit Linux

I'm surprised. I haven't been keeping up with AMD's processor technologies, but it would seem that the Bobcat is a stout little processor core. I would say big thanks also to AMD.

I'm curious - what does PTQ say the the CPU's performance index is? My aging Core2Duo (2.9GHz, MacbookPro) gives a number in the 50-55 range.

Reply by groovy

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Re: Notebook with AMD E-350 CPU and 64-bit Linux

Hello,

JerryKnight wrote:

I'm surprised. I haven't been keeping up with AMD's processor technologies, but it would seem that the Bobcat is a stout little processor core. I would say big thanks also to AMD.

You can think of the AMD E-350 being some kind of Intel atom, but with faster graphics, two real cores, 64-bit and virtualization technology.

JerryKnight wrote:

I'm curious - what does PTQ say the the CPU's performance index is? My aging Core2Duo (2.9GHz, MacbookPro) gives a number in the 50-55 range.

The performance index is 14 with my setup from above.

- groovy

Reply by grimborg

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  • Registered: 04-12-2010
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Re: Notebook with AMD E-350 CPU and 64-bit Linux

I'm runninng Pianoteq on Ubuntu GNU/Linux 11.10 with Linux 3.2 (generic) and ALSA. I tried Jack a while ago and in my case it had actually more latency than ALSA. I'm happy with the result: it was very easy to set it up and it just works.