Would this be a good computer to buy for my home studio?

[jacksonp]

HI,

Was at Bestbuy today and saw this Gateway FX6800 with the new i7 chip and ddr3 ram, as well as two slots for Sata drives for easy expansion. Seems good, but there were a few negative reviews amongst the many good ones. It's supposed to be a gamers computer, but for the price ($1250) and the latest hardware it got me thinking about how it would respond as a recording computer right off the shelf.

If you were in the market, would you buy it ? Anything you'd swap out? (I read 3GB ram may not be enough but there are 3 more slots available to add to), and power supply should possibly be boosted to 850W). I'd be using cubase, to record a band of between 8-16 tracks at once (at the most intensive circumstances ). Any thoughts?

bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9081325&type=product&id=1218017465909

THANK YOU!

 

[johnnymegabyte]

1) What operating system ? Most likely VISTA Home Basic or Home Premium, which are 32 bit O/S. So is XP, except XP64
A 32 bit O/S cannot address higher than 3GB RAM, so what you heard is BS, unless it was refered to a 64 bit O/S.
2) Does it have a Firewire (iLink) ?
3) What audio interfacre are you planning on using ? FW/USB/PCI ?


and if you are buying a new computer, does it make sense to buy it and upgrade ASAP. You might negate warranty

I would consider a small PC shop that can build you a PC with the right components and guaranteed, since they put it together, and will work out cheaper than the Gateway. That's the way it works out here in Toronto. You can save 30%, and have all the right components = no throwaway of original parts.

 

[jacksonp]

HI Johnny,

Thanks for the reply. To answer your questions,

1)it comes with vista 64, 3GB ram (ddr3) with 3 open slots to upgrade and right now my understanding is that the highest memory chip you can get in ram ddr3 right now is 2gb per card module. That means at present I could upgrade from 3gb to 9gb. I've heard 1 GB of ram ddr3 is roughly equivalent to 2gb ram ddr2, but I know vista 64 is quite a bit more intensive to run - so overall I have no idea what kind of latency issues or whatever I might run into when recording or processing a lot of tracks at once.

2) Not sure if it has an "ilink" firewire, but it does have firewire ports and also esata, which I use for my external hardrives.

3) Right now I have firewire audio interfaces that I use (mackie onxy 1640, firestudio, and RME fireface 800). I've most used this equipment live recording gigs with my laptop running on XP, but would like to be able to harness the power of a desktop at home.

The rest of the specs are available by taking the url I posted and throwing the www in front (sorry, the original post wouldn't allow me to type the full url)

THANKS FOR YOUR INPUT!
JP

 

[AndrewClaycomb]

you could build an awesome computer from newegg.com for less than that including 2 19" lcd monitors.

 

[RWhite]

I agree, either build a PC yourself or have someone build one for you.

And stay the hell away from Vista 64.

 

[Hard2Hear]

For anyone looking into i7 systems. Two important things to consider, both memory related. First, don't even bother with DDR3-1066. Worse performance than DDR2-800 because of the higher latency. As cheap as it is now, every audio system should use 1600 speed DDR3, which then negates the latency. Also, some of these cheaper x58 systems are not running memory in tri channel, but in the DDR2 dual channel mode. This will REALLY bottleneck the i7 processors and the whole intent behind QuickPath Interconnect and the X58 design. Where the X58 and i7 really shine is the tri channel 1600(+) speed memory using quick path for direct memory access from the processor. anything else is really wasting money to have the blue i7 sticker on the case.

 

[The REAL Jigsaw]

Don't waste your money. What's the point in spending that much when computers are always getting better. Heck, I recently built a Core2Quad computer with 8gb RAM and am already eying those i7 processors (forgot the name). Case in point, don't spend more than a grand for everything (video card included) if your primary goal is to record audio.

Also, games have to be coded to take advantage of multi-core. The only benefit of more than 2 processors is rendering (aside from server and virtual-related tasks).


SHAVEZ

 

[dgatwood]

Also, games have to be coded to take advantage of multi-core. The only benefit of more the 2 processors is rendering (at the moment).

Audio effect processing benefits greatly from multiple CPUs and multiple cores... or did you mean "the only benefit" as it pertains to games?

2) Not sure if it has an "ilink" firewire, but it does have firewire ports and also esata, which I use for my external hardrives.

iLink is just Sony's trademarked name for FireWire. Sony has a serious case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome, in case you hadn't noticed....

 

[The REAL Jigsaw]

Audio effect processing benefits greatly from multiple CPUs and multiple cores... or did you mean "the only benefit" as it pertains to games?

Well it all depends on what you mean by greatly. Sure multi-core computers can process more, that's no question. But my point is, it's not a killer jump in speed for what needs to be accomplished to create a musical masterpiece. But then again, I'm just a solo recording artist, so what would I know?