AMD K-2 or Pentium III - is there a difference?

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faithmonster

faithmonster

New member
Greets to all.

I'm building a computer which will be used
for home digital recording only. My question is this- is there a difference or problems
with using an AMD K-2 or Athlon processor
versus a Pentium III of the same mHz rating?
I've heard some cons against the AMD. But if
someone is using an AMD based system, please
write me. Either way would be OK, I just like AMD chips.
 
I have used Intel from the start. I read a huge article at harmony-central.com a while ago having AMD and Intel going head to head strictly for recording and the Intel was much better. I am not sure about the new AMD Aphlon, but it might be ok. Anyway, that is just what I have read. Plus, you can get a PIII 500 for about 250 now. I would recomend it.

MIKE
 
Jim,

You haven't noticed any problems with your K6-2 because you don't have anything to compare it to! :)

Seriously, the difference in price between a Celeron and a K6-2 or K6-3 (same beast for the most part) is negligable, but the difference in performance is very great.

I haven't read anything negative about the Athlon that would lead me to believe that it wouldn't work out for recording or any application. There were some compatibility issue with early Athlon motherboards, but as far as I've heard those have been resolved.

In fact, there have been worse things going on with current Intel chipsets!

I'm still sticking with Intel personally. It's just more easy to deal with more popular hardware. Just about all software is written optimized for Intel first, not AMD.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Mastahnke- greets and thanks.

The P III would be a better choice. The Athlon is relatively new, and more choices
seem to work better with an Intel product- I found that to be true for my wife's PC.
Thanks for your response. I plan to use Cool
Edit Pro and Cakewalk Pro Audio ver. 9. Your
thoughts and expertise welcome here too.

Mark H. aka Faithmonster
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by mastahnke:
I have used Intel from the start. I read a huge article at harmony-central.com a while ago having AMD and Intel going head to head strictly for recording and the Intel was much better. I am not sure about the new AMD Aphlon, but it might be ok. Anyway, that is just what I have read. Plus, you can get a PIII 500 for about 250 now. I would recomend it.

MIKE<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
 
Unfortunately, the motherboard chipsets that are used by the Athlon, K6-3, and K6-2 processors are not quite up to snuff for DAW work. The processors are quite fine otherwise!

Over time (like maybe 8 to 16 months) new generations of motherboard chipsets will be introduced by Sis, Via, AMD, and others that will gain "Intel compatibility" over what's available now. AMD systems are primarily aimed at home users (Athlon for gamers in particular) and various general business users. The technical workstation users aren't being catered to yet, but they will.
 
Greets Gary.

Thanks for your reply. This has been really
hard to do- get good advice here in Okla.
locally. I don't know of any SIG's for this.
Any ideas on a soundcard for a newbie? I thought possibly E-mu or Gina... Mona or Layla would be overkill for me.

Mark H. aka Faithmonster
 
>Unfortunately, the motherboard chipsets that are used by the Athlon, K6-3, and K6-2 processors are not quite up to snuff for DAW work.<

Hmmmm.... dunno, but perhaps that should be stated as opinion rather than fact. I'm not a tech guy - but when building my system most socket 7 MBs supported both K6-2 & Pentium chips. In my opinion the Athlon rocks out for recording; but don't know much about the K6-III. I personally use a K6-2, and have run into no problems over the last year or so with my DAW - the Pentium has better floating point processing capabilities, and allows you to run more direct-x plugs - but IMO you don't NEED to shell out the extra $ to get you DAW off the ground. If you do want to spend the cash, I'd go with an Athlon over anything else available.

I'm not replying in order to get into a pissing contest over what's faster/better; and supplying numbers or backing up statements - just giving an opinion from my experience.

Good luck, man.
 
Waaahhhh!!!! :)
Actually, a friend made the switch over to digital from analog @ the same time that I was building my setup - we've traded some gear, & worked in each others'studios - I built with the K6-2 & he built with a PII, again, the <notable> difference (to the end user) was processing power on real-time FX... I was choking on four or five and he cooked with about eight - I've also seen an Athlon in use for studio work - now, if you're jamming 8 tracks of digital audio in and 10 out, I have no experience on how any of those chips will react - but the whole system has to be in shape for that.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by faithmonster:
Any ideas on a soundcard for a newbie? I thought possibly E-mu or Gina... Mona or Layla would be overkill for me.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

How about an integrated audio + midi card, with the analogue audio quality being the best in its price class of under $500 steet price -- this would be the LynxONE:
http://www.lynxstudio.com/

with independent tests at: http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/LynxONE/


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jitteringjim:
>Unfortunately, the motherboard chipsets that are used by the Athlon, K6-3, and K6-2 processors are not quite up to snuff for DAW work.<

Hmmmm.... dunno, but perhaps that should be stated as opinion rather than fact.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

There are definitely folks having problems with Athlon-based DAW systems. I've been seeing enough comments by people having problems to say that it's certainly not an isolated problem.

Some of the known problems with Athlon systems have been with Via chipset IRQ Steering problems. Other problems are apparently certain video card + audio card combinations, being that Brand-X video card drivers are stomping on Brand-Y audio card drivers, etc. The driver problems can be worked out in the near term, however the chipset problems will unfortunately be an evolutionary thing that may take months. Hopefully the new Via chipset for the Athlon -- the KX133 -- will finally be the answer to full-up Intel BX/GX-level compatibility!!! The price/performance ratio for Athlon systems is simply excellent and will only get better.

On the Intel front... The recent i810, i820 (Camino),and i840 chipsets have had major problems with memory architectures. Intel has also unfortunately decided to "give us an audio card" with these new chipsets, but fortunately this feature can be disabled. So, what's the way to go with a mobo built with Intel chipsets? You definitely want to go with either the i440BX (for 1 processor, 3 DIMMs) or i440GX (1 or 2 processors, 4 DIMMs).
 
Thanks Slackmaster2K and Jitteringjim.

Since the Athlon is still relatively new, I'd
probably be better off to go with the P III.
I'm going for the best and simplest bcuz when it comes to computers I'm like Winnie the Pooh- a bear of very little brain.

Thanks again
Mark aka the Faithmonster
 
Thanks Gary.

Checked out the website for Lynx One. I like.
Very much. You also mentioned the i440GX for
1 or 2 processors. Would there be any advantage to running two processors? I can see the benefit of 4 DIMM sockets.

Mark aka the Faithmonster
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by faithmonster:
...You also mentioned the i440GX for
1 or 2 processors. Would there be any advantage to running two processors? I can see the benefit of 4 DIMM sockets.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I realise now that I missed adding a line for the i440BX mobo description in my last message above, so...

A clarification on i440GX: You don't have to have a GX-based mobo to have up to 4 DIMM slots or even dual processors. There are also BX mobos that will do this. The RAM limit for an i440BX mobo is 1 GB or RAM. However, i440GX mobos allow you to use the high density 512MB DIMMs to achieve greater than 1GB of RAM -- up to 2GB of RAM -- for those *high-end* applications. :) For about US$70 extra, you can go with an i440GX-based mobo.

But in as far as dual processors go... For those who needing high background performance in a multi-tasking environment and/or those who may need raw processing power like mixing dozens and dozens of audio tracks + effects without glitches, et cetera -- should consider a dual processor machine and probably fast RAID storage as well. But these are *upper* mid-range and high-end options. You can put a single processor into a dual-processor mobo, then add a second equivalent processor later. Another note: Win95 and Win98 can't use more than 1 processor, only WinNT and Windows 2000 can. And, assuming you are using WinNT or Win2kPro, if you add a second processor later you'll have to reload the operating system as the multi-processor kernel along with the proper hardware abstraction layer must be installed during setup.

You can custom build your own DAW or have a vendor build a basic machine that you can add peripherals to (audio boards and other interfaces)...

A high-quality American-made mobo like a Supermicro P6DBU (an i440BX mobo)...
http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/440BX/p6dbu.htm
http://www.supermicro.com/images/Imag_html/P6DBU.htm

...goes for around US$375, can support 1 or 2 Pentium III processors, 5 PCI slots, and has built-in Ultra2 SCSI that can be upgraded to Ultra2 RAID with a small add-in card (Adaptec ARO-1130U2) for about US$260. If you don't need the RAID upgrade, you can use the onboard SCSI channel to connect an Ultra2 SCSI hard drive. If you just need basic cheap ATA/33 storage, of course, there are a pair of IDE channels. With those 4 DIMM sockets, you can get up to 512MB of RAM using less-expensive 128MB DIMMs, although if you were in need of this much RAM you would be smart to go with ECC (error correcting) memory which costs about 20% more than non-ECC RAM.

A similar Supermicro BX mobo, the P6SBU, has one processor slot, 3 DIMM slots, 5 PCI slots, and 1 Ultra2 SCSI channel, goes for around US$275 street price.
http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/440BX/p6sbu.htm

The P6SBA has one processor slot, 3 DIMM slots, 4 PCI slots, and no onboard SCSI. Street price is around US$95.
http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/440BX/p6sba.htm

There's also a 370-pin socket-style Celeron equivalent of the above i440BX mobo -- the 370SBA. It also has about a US$95 street price.
http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/440BX/370SBA.htm

High speed Celerons can make perfectly good home DAWs.

Another *nice* capability to have -- and this is certainly not a requirement -- but it can make things much much nicer to use, is dual display monitors.

A Matrox Millennium G-400 32MB "dual-head" AGP display adaptor (the standard retail version) can drive 2 separate computer monitors or 1 computer monitor and 1 television monitor. Basically, you can setup a giant virtual desktop that spans the two monitors. You just drag your mouse pointer between the virtual desktops as needed. The Matrox Millennium G-400 32MB "dual-head" is the only AGP graphics adaptor on the market that is capable of driving two different monitors in this fashion. The Matrox G-400 is also an extremely fast pixel writer and its drivers are known to be very stable. The Matrox Millennium G-400 32MB "dual-head" adaptor is around US$150 street price.

More information at:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/mill_g400/applications/dh_main.htm
 
I agree with everything you said except for the RAID issue. I can't see spending that kind of money on such high level file security. It would probably be more worthwhile to get a nice 20GB tape backup system and do nightly backups. We are talking about PC's that are going to be used for one primary non-network environment task.

Slackmaster 2000
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slackmaster2K:
I agree with everything you said except for the RAID issue. I can't see spending that kind of money on such high level file security. It would probably be more worthwhile to get a nice 20GB tape backup system and do nightly backups. We are talking about PC's that are going to be used for one primary non-network environment task.

Slackmaster 2000<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


RAID: The 2 most common forms of RAID can give you either very high performance (RAID-0) through data stiping or security (RAID-1) through redundancy. The ARO-1130U2 RAID card can do either. Most DAW folks using RAID would likely go for RAID-0.


Otherwise, I agree with you 100% on a high capacity tape drive like DAT, Travan, or SLR -- these tape formats are pretty good for the $$$. 8mm or AIT can give you faster backups and even more storage, with DLT at the top.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yet something else here... an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to keeps things glitch free -- as in making sure a sudden power dropout or brownout doesn't screw you up!

In fact, you may even need more than 1 UPS. You'll certainly need 1 for the computer + monitor, but you should consider another for any outboard recorders, mixers, rack effects where you can't afford a power interruption (much less a power spike).
http://www.apcc.com/products/techspecs/index.cfm?base_sku=BP650S


Electronic instruments like keyboards can benefit from a UPS or an active power filter, since they contain sensitive circuitry just like computers.
http://www.apcc.com/products/line-r/index.cfm
 
Gary, I agree about the raid question. I do computer animation and a little video and Raid 0 with data stripping works great. the computer see's two three or whatever drives you are using as one large drive. For video its imperitive. Just wish I could afford it for home. Someday.

Layth
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Layth:
...I agree about the raid question. I do computer animation and a little video and Raid 0 with data stripping works great... ...Just wish I could afford it for home. Someday.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, if you wanna take the low road to RAID -- and it ain't too bad actually, as long as you stay away from certain Maxtor hard drives -- you can go with IDE-based RAID (actually ATA/66 RAID).

There's a couple of IDE RAID controllers on the market that are affordable, which you can connect up to 4 ATA/66 hard drives to and configure them as one RAID set. The most popular is the Promise FastTrak. Cost is about US$240 for the controller.
http://www.promise.com/Products/ideraid/ft66page.htm#serv

Actually, there's a bit on info floating around on the 'net about how you can hack a Promise Ultra66 IDE controller, converting it into a RAID controller, because apparently both cards use the SAME controller chipset. The Promise Ultra66 IDE controller goes for US$45 or less!!! RAID-0 for $45 + the cost of 2 or 4 drives.


There's also a new sophisticated IDE RAID controller on the market that's comparable in price to the Promise, from a company called 3Ware. They also have higher-end 4-port and 8-port models!!!
http://www.3ware.com/index.shtml
 
Thanks Gary, I'll be checking those sites out tonight. Sounds like it would work great for the amount video I do and even better for the DAW I'm building. It will be a combo video recording machine. This should help keep the cost down.
 
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