Re: OT: Accelerated 3D GFX cards with Free drivers (was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: The best distro for music creation)

From: Paul Davis <paul@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Thu Dec 15 2005 - 16:18:33 EET

> > Currently, I am trying to decide between an RME
> > Hammerfall and an M-Audio Delta 1010 audio card. Just
> > as the 3D provides video performance, the RME
> > Hammerfall does the same for audio, off loading the
> > audio processing away from the main cpu. The alsa
> > project also says both cards are supported.

this is an unfortunate reading of BS marketing text.

the hammerfall series (digiXXXX and HDSP) do nothing of the sort, they
never did, they don't on any other OS, etc etc etc.

all that RME is referring to here are 2 things:

        a) direct monitoring without CPU involvement
              - well yeah, except that even consumer analog
                cards do that

        b) the card is a DMA busmaster, and so the CPU doesn't
           need to be involved in transferring data to the
           card, it just stuffs it into host-side RAM
              - well yeah, except that almost every other
                PCI card on the planet *except* RME's
                earlier designs do this too. this is
                really just an apology for the incredibly
                stupid design of the digi96 series, which
                require active participation by the host
                CPU to move data to the card.

--p
Received on Thu Dec 15 20:15:05 2005

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