I'm going to be building a new PC soon and will be purchasing the GTX 470 fermi chip. I would like to implement CUDA FIR filters. However, I have a few questions.
Are there any soundcards which offer high quality digital outputs while not being expensive? The 1616m offers digital outputs and high quality balanced outputs, but its $500. If I were using FIR filters, I don't think I would need any processing on the soundcard. I'd be using an amplifier with a digital input.
Could I do any other processing on the GTX 470 (ex. video) while running FIR?
Would I need to run 2x GTX 470 to display video while implementing FIR?
Would a GTX295 be superior to a GTX470?
Would i7 930 w/ Gigabyte X58A-UD3R and 6GB XMS3 DDR3-1600 be sufficient?
Thanks,
Thadman
Are there any soundcards which offer high quality digital outputs while not being expensive? The 1616m offers digital outputs and high quality balanced outputs, but its $500. If I were using FIR filters, I don't think I would need any processing on the soundcard. I'd be using an amplifier with a digital input.
Could I do any other processing on the GTX 470 (ex. video) while running FIR?
Would I need to run 2x GTX 470 to display video while implementing FIR?
Would a GTX295 be superior to a GTX470?
Would i7 930 w/ Gigabyte X58A-UD3R and 6GB XMS3 DDR3-1600 be sufficient?
Thanks,
Thadman
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You can probably get away with any kind of digital outs.
Considering that there are CUDA MPEG decoders that people use to watch movies, probably yes.
Considering that there are CUDA MPEG decoders that people use to watch movies, probably no.
Good enough is good enough.
A very interesting subject, using these parallel processing monsters for complex filtering... cool. how do you intend to implement them?
Using something from here:
Koon Lab
Or do you intend to write your own?
Unless you intend on using some kind of snake oil harnessing esoteric magic dacs before your amps, the onboard dacs on any decent sound card should be => anything connected via a length of cable carrying your jittery spdif clock...
I havnt got into the CUDA sdk yet but I cant imagine on a platform that exists based on parallel processing you would be unable to run more than one 'task'.
I should think not...
To both questions: That is FAR more processing power than I think you could ever use... you should be able to run 100s of channels with multiple filters on each in near realtime on a single GTX470 (if the code your using to run them works properly)...
Using something from here:
Koon Lab
Or do you intend to write your own?
Unless you intend on using some kind of snake oil harnessing esoteric magic dacs before your amps, the onboard dacs on any decent sound card should be => anything connected via a length of cable carrying your jittery spdif clock...
I havnt got into the CUDA sdk yet but I cant imagine on a platform that exists based on parallel processing you would be unable to run more than one 'task'.
I should think not...
To both questions: That is FAR more processing power than I think you could ever use... you should be able to run 100s of channels with multiple filters on each in near realtime on a single GTX470 (if the code your using to run them works properly)...
Indeed, on a virtually free (people throw them away) AMD K7 system, I run 6 channels (active 3ways) with separate long tap (65536) filters for crossover, eq and phase... and I use no where near full CPU load.
However, since the OP mentioned video at the same time its possible he requires near realtime filters... something that requires (a bit) more power. Even though with any proper video solution adding delay to the video stream is trivial.
The purpose of using the amazing parallel processing power these latest generation gfx cards have to me is the possibility of having very complex filters running on many many channels in very close to realtime... overkill for average home system.
For a home system the obvious harware to buy is one of the intel atom based ITX boards...
Wouldn't the electrical ground in a computer be quite noisy? I assume this would significantly affect the performance of on-board DACs. A digital signal could offer isolation, however I'm not sure if this would be the lesser of two evils compared to a jittery clock.
"Significantly affect the performace"?
Noone seems to ground things properly... spend a few thousand on an exotic power amp and you'l still see basic mistakes made in star ground/power layout... you think your few hundred dollar 'magic' dac will be any better?
You could isolate the two systems using optical spdif... but you still end up with clock regeneration issues that I think are better dealt with using I2C (with separate lines for clock, not encoded into the stream) and only a few mm of pcb track...
If you want to go nuts, find the posts by a guy who replaces the analogue stage (EDIT: I say 'analogue stage' as replacing 100db+ snr dacs for other 100db+ snr dacs will make no difference) of a sound card, pulling the I2C feeds off a card and pipes them to external dac chips on a daughter board next to it...
More on PC ground. Ok, computers use switch mode power supplies, if the filtering on the output is so bad that there lines should be considered noisy and unsuitable for sound cards... how is bit perfect (if one calc is wrong it all goes pear shaped) processing from multiple gigahertz processors happening? Yes CPUs have multiple stage power supplies... so do the PCI slots on a motherboard... wheres the beef?
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