At 11:01 AM 3/14/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
But, if it turns out that we want or need to have a browser window up, contesting or RTTY software running, we may find that the reality deviates slightly from the official minimums. I was particularly disappointed in the Celeron I used on my laptop (which was not purchased with this in mind, but does exceed the official minimums by quite a bit). It could have been raw clock rate that disadvantaged it over my desktop, but the cache situation probably contributed as well. Regardless, it is notably "glitchier" the way I typically run than the corresponding desktop at 2.4 GHz with a much more ample cache. Yet, both are well above the official minimums.
A particular trap with laptops (and portable computers in general) is that they change the processor speed dynamically for thermal management. My HP TC1100 tablet has a notional 1GHz processor, however, if I run a BIG NEC4.1 model on it (which is pretty much 100% CPU), as soon as the fan comes on, the CPU starts slowing down, until it's running at 0.25 GHz (according to the display on My Computer/Properties).
Now that I think about it, this could lead to some very weird performance effects with PowerSDR. What might be a perfectly reasonable buffer size and update rate when you start might wind up being way wrong eventually.
And lest you think that this is peculiar to laptops, there's a fair number of desktop/consumer market machines doing speed management as well. Cooler CPU means longer life, means fewer warranty calls, and slower fan speeds means quieter computers for all those "media center" kinds of applications.
