DAW Specs - AMD ok?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jimarick
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Jimarick

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Hi, Ive nearly finished planning my DAW.

The Last thing i need to do is upgrade my computer. I know alot about building computers, so all i am really doing is looking on advice for DAW specific computers. The cheapest option for me is to upgrade my processor to an Athlon XP Barton 2800+. This will be compatable with my existing motherboard. I already have 768mb (Pc2700) DDR ram.

I found that my amd athlon XP (Palamino core) 1900+ couldnt cut the cubase SX2 editing, as it struggled to play back the mix (about 5 tracks at the same time running). What is everyones opinion of this suggested specs?

I was going to connect an E-mu 1820 to it. I would like to be acle to record 2 or 3 tracks at any one time. Will this be possible, or should i look to an Intel P4 2.8ghz processer with hyperthreading. (This would come to another $200 as id need a new motherboard too!)

Finally, can anyone tell me about driver support for the E-mu 1820 and the Asus A7V8X which is my current motherboard (it has 333mhz fsb support).

Thanks very much!,
James
 
jim - did i read that right ? an xp1900 not playing back 5 tracks in real time ?
ie; your multitrack playback ?
if thats the case something is WRONG with your system.
a humble duron 1.3ghz plays back 40 tracks !
with respect i would suggest a computer tech check your system ?
maybe i'm confused if i read you wrong. please give more info.
also please check that you have dma enabled on your drives.
(look in windows control panel).
with an xp1900 you should be able to get pretty decent track counts.
 
Your XP1900 should handle just fine for 3 simultaneous tracks, Are you running a dedicated hard drive for recording or using the drive for other applications too? XP2500 will cost you 115 dollar so if you thinking about upgrading might as well as go with 2.8P4 C processor and a nice mother board for 125 more, you can over clock it to 3.0 easily and have fun. Every music program will run solid in it and you can record 16 tracks at a time :D
 
Hi,

Yeah it is an athlon XP 1900 and it waas really jumpy when playing back the cubase SX montage of about 5 tracks. I havent formatted in a while though so ill try that first, it needs a good format.

And no, i wasnt using a dedicated HDD, jut the one with the windows installation on to try it.

Thanks
James
 
Jimarick said:
Hi,

Yeah it is an athlon XP 1900 and it waas really jumpy when playing back the cubase SX montage of about 5 tracks. I havent formatted in a while though so ill try that first, it needs a good format.

And no, i wasnt using a dedicated HDD, jut the one with the windows installation on to try it.

Thanks
James
Click to expand...

You don't say what soundcard you used. If you got this kind of performance with onboard audio, I wouldn't be surprised.
 
brzilian said:
You don't say what soundcard you used. If you got this kind of performance with onboard audio, I wouldn't be surprised.
Click to expand...

Hi, Sorry, well I was using an old SB audigy card. But my friend using a P4 2.4 laptop was fine running it with onboard sound?

I dont know why it was running so slow really, but as long as everyone here thinks an amd XP 2800 (333fsb) with 768 mb DDR (pc2700) ram will manage it im happy.

I was thinking of getting a raid array as I currently am running out of space on 2 120gb drives, this should speed things up too:)

Thanks
James
 
Jimarick said:
Hi, Sorry, well I was using an old SB audigy card. But my friend using a P4 2.4 laptop was fine running it with onboard sound?

I dont know why it was running so slow really, but as long as everyone here thinks an amd XP 2800 (333fsb) with 768 mb DDR (pc2700) ram will manage it im happy.

I was thinking of getting a raid array as I currently am running out of space on 2 120gb drives, this should speed things up too:)

Thanks
James
Click to expand...

Whose ASIO drivers were you using? It makes a difference.

As far as RAID goes. I think you will be dissapointed. RAID makes a difference if you are trying to access multiple files simultaneously. What you are looking for is raw bandwidth.
 
Im really not sure about the asio drivers, think it was the ones supplied with cubase SX2 if that helps.

But as I said they coped fine on my friends laptop.

What i would be interested to know if anyone could tell me, is how to connect my computer speakers to the emu 1820? they are simply a pair of labtec speakers with a subwoofer, connecting to the current soundcard on a single 1/8" jack. Will this be possible with the e-mu or will I have to connect them to the onboard soundcard for movie watching and listening to music on the computer?

Thanks,
James
 
Get one of those 1/8" to 1/4" inch adapters at radio shack, and jack it into the headphone out on the EMU

Jimarick said:
Im really not sure about the asio drivers, think it was the ones supplied with cubase SX2 if that helps.

But as I said they coped fine on my friends laptop.

What i would be interested to know if anyone could tell me, is how to connect my computer speakers to the emu 1820? they are simply a pair of labtec speakers with a subwoofer, connecting to the current soundcard on a single 1/8" jack. Will this be possible with the e-mu or will I have to connect them to the onboard soundcard for movie watching and listening to music on the computer?


Thanks,
James
Click to expand...
 
Don't waste your money on an XP2800+. Get a "Mobile" XP2400+ for 77 bucks at New Egg. These are fully unlocked and can run higher than 2.2 GHz without breaking a sweat. The bus speed is also unlocked and can run 400FSB. I have mine running at 2.33GHZ with a stock heatsink and the idle temp runs between 35c and 39c depending on my room temp. The benchmarks smoked a P4 2.8GHz.
 
brzilian said:
As far as RAID goes. I think you will be dissapointed. RAID makes a difference if you are trying to access multiple files simultaneously. What you are looking for is raw bandwidth.
Click to expand...

I'd have thought you would see an improvement in throughput as the striping shares the i/o load across 2 controllers, so each disk effectively writes or reads only half as much data as a single disk would have to.

The downside of course is that if one disk fails you lose the lot
 
jim some ideas....
1. loose the sb card. try something like the emu mentioned or an maudio card. just make sure you choose a sound card compatible with your
chipset and motherboard. ask the sound card vendor.
2. after having got rid of the sb card i bet your track counts will improve if your system is properly set up. if they dont with an xp1900 then get a tech to check it out. something fishy going on.
3. stay away from raid. keep it simple.
OCNOR ive been looking at those mp processors. could you do a test please.
my standard test for processors. record 44.1/16 bit of any audio for 3 minutes.
then use something like sound forge or cool edit 96 noise reduction.
and time the time to do the NR on the 3 minute file.
so far the best ive heard is an amd 64 took 1.75 secs. blazing !
p4's typically take 15 to 18 secs.
 
I tried your test with Adobe Audition and Waves noise reduction. My results were not even close to the AMD 64 [ 1.75 secs WOW!]. With the Adobe It took about 12 secs with the Waves about 9 secs.
 
thnx ocnor. for the test. that mp is still respectable. yes the amd64 is wow indeed. the guy reported the test was done in sound forge.
as a computer engineer i believe its the very best test ie: NR.
because it really WORKS the processor being all maths dsp.
its the best true test of processor power i know of and cuts through all arguments of whose machine is better than whose.
but your mp from all the tests ive done so far comes in SECONDin processors.
very very nice and i think if you did the test in sound forge a few secs might be shaved off as cool edits test seems to take longer than sound forges.
thanks. with an xp1900 system jims system should do it around 18 secs
from my previous tests of xp processors or maybe less.
 
Make sure you get a quality MB - ASUS & Epox are good.

You'd do better with the WD Raptor (SATA, 10K), than with regular ATA Raid.

Also, AMD Opterons are amazing - and that's running at 32bit
 
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