AMD or Intel?

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billy3000

billy3000

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I searched for this. I really did! couldn't find an exsisting thread that was relavent.

I am watching and sort of involved in a friendly debate in another forum which is more focused on PC's rather than using them for recording.

One guy is hammering me about how much cheaper the socket ....I forgot sorry
whatever socket the celeron D is and how great the celeron processor is. He contends that Intel is superior for the digital audio application.

opinions, comments? thanks!

Bill
 
Ford or Chevy?

Doesn't matter. At the end of the day, the cpu is the least of your worries. Just get the fastest one you can afford, and don't even consider a celeron
 
yeah I agree.. just get Loads of RAM, at least 1 GB and a fast HDD.. and dont run your system on the same HDD .. have a dedicated HDD for recording purposes only :)
 
yeah, celeron is kinda cheap, not great for studio apps. get a real computer, try a mac dude! yeah, they are pretty expensive and all that jazz, but i have less software issues than i did with my pc.

other than that, heres some stuff to keep in mind:
1)AMD's tend to run much hotter than intel's.
2)The Processor ratings (Ghz) are not even between Intel and AMD, this means that a 2.8 AMD Athlon 64 is NOT the equivalent of a 2.8 Pentium D or P4.
3)Get plenty of FAST ram, meaning the fastest your PC can handle, usually DDR400. Dont settle for the cheaper DDR333 and all that stuff.
4)When Ram shopping, look for LOW LATENCY. A good CAS Latency is 2-3. Dont go any higher than 3.5. Of course, the lower the latecy, the more expensive.
5)Two HD's are necessary. minimum 7200 RPM on both, if possible. It may be a good idea to get Three 10,000 RPM HD's, i say three becuase the biggest one is something like 74Gb.
6)Dont be afraid to spend $$$ on a good power supply, get something BIG.
7)Spend a couple bucks on some extra fans that you can mount, you know where they go, in the back of the tower, the big ones only cost like 15 bucks each...
8)If you have the extra $$$, look into a water cooling system. I am not very familiar with them, but i know they are effective and expensive.

All these things will make a nice difference. You will be able to handle more plugins, tracks etc.

(or just by a mac.)
 
1)AMD's tend to run much hotter than intel's.
Click to expand...

This was true maybe 3 years ago, no longer the case. Intels run much hotter than AMDs now

3)Get plenty of FAST ram, meaning the fastest your PC can handle, usually DDR400. Dont settle for the cheaper DDR333 and all that stuff.
Click to expand...

DDR400 is old news, any newer system will run DDR2 at 667 mhz in dual channel mode (effectivly making it 1.3 ghz). Look for quality ram for sure (I'm a fan of Corsair)

6)Dont be afraid to spend $$$ on a good power supply, get something BIG.
Click to expand...

VERY IMPORTANT. A psu can make or break a system, don't go cheapy. Compare power outputs at temperature (they are usually rated at room temp, they dont stay that way at operating temp) also look for ripple. I just replaced my PSU with a Seasonic 600w and am very happy with it (very quiet) but at least spend over a $100.

Power supplies are the most failure prone part of a PC so do your homework

Beyond that, look at benchmarking sites for the DAW you are looking at using. Sonar will run nativly on win64 (the only one AFAIK) so that would be a logical fit if you go AMD x2 and Win64.

Cubase runs best on AMDx2 processers (as far as track count, CPU load, etc) and is at par with Quad G5s as far as performance.

The bottom line is that all the top of the line CPUs will be withing 5% of each other so it is up to you what you want to run. But the most important thing is to really do your research, find the mainboard you want, look it up in as many places as you can then go buy it based on what you find.

As far as buying a Mac now for a DAW, be warned that PPC is history in the mac and Steve Jobs himself declared that they will be an all intel shop in about a year so you are left with this quandry: buy a PPC based mac and have all your software updates dry up in a year for your software (which may or may not be acceptable) or by an Intel based Mac now and wait for x86 native Mac software. I find neither option acceptable and is one of the reasons I dont get near Macs

Personally, if I had to reccomend a CPU right now, I would go with an AMD X2. The multi core is the future for sure, so theres no reason to low ball yourself
 
VSProductions said:
5)Two HD's are necessary. minimum 7200 RPM on both, if possible. It may be a good idea to get Three 10,000 RPM HD's, i say three becuase the biggest one is something like 74Gb.
Click to expand...


Actually there are 150gb raptors(10,00rpm) HD's out. They run about 300 a pop.
 
Certainly, there are better, faster machines now. But, my Celeron 2.4 is making very good recordings... thank you very much.
 
But, my Celeron 2.4 is making very good recordings.
Click to expand...

I'm sure thats true, recording is not really that processer intensive.

The really general rule is: Recording will stress you HD and related bus
CPU will determine your realtime processing latency (along
with soundcard and driver)
Memory will determine how many plugins (also cpu related)

Actually there are 150gb raptors(10,00rpm) HD's out
Click to expand...

Nice. I just got a 74 at new egg for 138 (20 rebate). You really dont need a humugous HD for your recording drive
 
i agree about the intel based macs, it doesnt sound like great news. I know i dont want one. ill stick with my g5's until the pry it from my cold dead hands. what's the point of buying a mac if pc and mac are becoming less different. i bought a mac so i wouldnt get viruses, spyware and all the other crap. next thing you know it, Mac OS will be DOS based...

And, cool, 150 gb 10k RPM drives.

Sorry for any bad info, its been a while since i've built a PC. I attempted to get DDR2 memory back then. The Ram was availible but there were no supporting motherboards at the time.
 
Scratch the Celeron, and the Duron (AMD's Celeron level processor). Both are woefully underpowered for anything audio.

Other then that, Dual Core P4 vs. Athlon X2, they're pretty even matched. AMD processors tend to run at slower clock speeds, but do more per cycle than Intels, so comparing them GHz for GHz is a moot point. In fact Intel has been moving away from the GHz ratings themselves, specially since the introduction of the Centrino processor that's being used in laptops as it also does more per clock cycle than a Pentium 4.

So, stay away from the Celeron and the Duron. And whether you go with Intel or AMD, get the fastest processor you can afford.
 
DAW is no longer a hard task for current computers.

There are no Durons anymore - AMD's entry level is the Sempron. These are quite capable chips and depending on the model/socket are actually either AthlonXP, Athlon XP "Barton" or Athlon64, any of which were able performers in DAW computers and obviously still are.
 
Jim Y said:
DAW is no longer a hard task for current computers.

There are no Durons anymore - AMD's entry level is the Sempron. These are quite capable chips and depending on the model/socket are actually either AthlonXP, Athlon XP "Barton" or Athlon64, any of which were able performers in DAW computers and obviously still are.
Click to expand...

I run a Sempron 3100+, which is an A64 core. On my busy 48 track test file it doesn't even break a sweat. Great deal!
 
The AMD X2 3800+ is the best value chip for home-recording apps available IMO; especially if it is run in a 64bit environment.
 
Codmate said:
The AMD X2 3800+ is the best value chip for home-recording apps available IMO; especially if it is run in a 64bit environment.
Click to expand...

I just recently got me one of those X2 3800+. There is a difference when you enable multiprocessor in cubase. I turn it on and the VST performance meter reduces by about 40%.
 
Much Thanks To You All!

I don't know why I'm not getting notification of posts to my thread....

Here's what a guy on tom's hardware forum had to say.....

Post(Msg. 79) Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:47 pm

Post subject: Re: pro audio digital recording [Login to view extended thread Info.]

The celeron will be enough. L2 cache is not an issue when it comes to raw encoding of audio and video (esp. audio). The celeron will perfrom clock for clock against its Pentium brother in this catagory. That is why I recommended the Celeron D over the more costly pentium. If you said you wanted to play games, I would have recommended an AMD product. Look at these benchmarks in support of my opinoin:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron_7.html
 
Here's what another hardware forum guy said

But with a homebuilt PC I would start off with an Foxconn, an AMD 3500+ Venice, a WD 250gb HDD , aThermaltake v2.0 PSU , at least a gig of value ram your going to need Xp no matter what (unless you're a mandrake fan) so,XP home will work just fine
If I were you, I would save maybe 150 bucks and add another burner for on the fly & basic multi-tasking. This rig will allow you to upgrade in the future if you be more heavily mulit-tasked and want to get a dual core AMD. Also, if your really pressed for the cash, then go over to zipzoomfly, whenever I price things out I always save 40 bucks off the free shipping & tax break
 
billy3000 said:
I don't know why I'm not getting notification of posts to my thread....

Here's what a guy on tom's hardware forum had to say.....

Post(Msg. 79) Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:47 pm

Post subject: Re: pro audio digital recording [Login to view extended thread Info.]

The celeron will be enough. L2 cache is not an issue when it comes to raw encoding of audio and video (esp. audio). The celeron will perfrom clock for clock against its Pentium brother in this catagory. That is why I recommended the Celeron D over the more costly pentium. If you said you wanted to play games, I would have recommended an AMD product. Look at these benchmarks in support of my opinoin:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron_7.html
Click to expand...

I don't think I'd agree with this. I wonder if this guy is thinking in terms of encoding mp3 audio in batch mode or something. The L2 cache allows the cpu to keep commonly referenced and/or recently used program code or data on the chip so it doesn't need to go hunting it down in memory. This is important in the real time environment of a multitrack daw with multiple tracks & plugins running concurrently. It's up to the cpu to keep the audio buffers filled for glitch free playback. As the workload (ie track or plugin count) increases, anything that slows down the processor (like having to go out to memory to get some data or instructions) will lower the threshold so audio glitches happen sooner rather than later
 
how bout this one?

Robert D said:
I run a Sempron 3100+, which is an A64 core. On my busy 48 track test file it doesn't even break a sweat. Great deal!
Click to expand...

AMD 3500+ Venice
 
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