DSP etc

[Robert E. Seastrom]

Alex Fraser <beatnic@home.com> writes:

> Has anyone
> experienced the 400 MHz bus speed machines? Are they "here" yet. By that
> I mean are they stable and don't require special code to run current
> boards? What are the best chip sets for DSP?

I've experimented with both P4 Rambus motherboards and Athlon DDR
motherboards.  No unusual difficulties with getting software to work,
and they appear to be quite stable.  The faster memory bus speed is a
big big help particularly for the i/o and network heavy stuff that I
do.  Rambus and DDR are both expensive compared to current PC100/PC133
SDRAM prices, but everything is relative...  if you compare current
Rambus prices to two years ago's PC100 prices, it appears very
reasonable indeed.  As always, if your time is at all valuable to you,
stay away from el-cheapo motherboards and buy from companies such as
Asus, Gigabyte, Tyan, etc.

My experience with them running FreeBSD has been very positive, and my
experience with Windows has been about as positive as a Windows
experience can be <cough>; you'll have to ask Maitland for Linux
impressions.

                                        ---Rob