DDR/266 Worth the Price?

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bongolation

bongolation

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OK, so I'm gradually building a DAW and buying the parts.

I've bagged a couple of 8.9ms 40G Seagates to run RAID and was planning on getting some RAID motherboard with a 1G Athlon. When pricing stuff, I repeatedly ran into people telling me that bargain PC133 memory would not work reliably with a 1G or faster system, and that I would have to pay for premium memory, as the cheap PC133 is slower, flakier or both. By the time I pay for that, I seem to be getting close to DDR/266 territory, and I wonder if I am better off going with a DDR/266 system.

Does anyone here run DDR/266 with a 1G Athlon, and is the added expense worth it? Is there some reason why this would not be suitable for a DAW? I have read in several places that CPUs over 1G were often problematic in DAW applications, so that's why I'm not going to a faster CPU.

Thanks you for any help!
 
why were 1+ gHz problematic in DAW apllications? where did you read that?
 
getthis said:
why were 1+ gHz problematic in DAW apllications? where did you read that?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I did not bookmark the site, but it was from a link in the pro recording Usenet group. The site was an extremely technical one dealing with DAWs and the problem, as I remember it, had to do with floating-point errors. The explanation was too deep for me to follow, but appeared to be well-supported. [shrug]

So...what about DDR, somebody?
 
ddr

WHen you are running a 1ghz processor on a motherboard that only supports 133mhz, where is the bottleneck? Its obvious, really. Although you may get more clock cycles performed before the cpu needs the bus again, the cpu is reliant on its cache memory and its ram. The cache is always WAY faster than the ram, but its also pretty damn small, and nowhere near enough. Therefore, ram comes in. The cpu has what is known as "wait states" where it has to request information, and then wait for the slow ass memory to ship it what it needs, or get it from the harddrive.
The DDR helps eliminate this by performing 2 calculations every clock cycle instead of 1. In theory, twice as fast.
A simple analogy... a sports bike that does 180mph, in gridlock. Useless, basically.
If you get the amd, be sure you specify the 266mhz front side bus, or else you may get the 200mhz front side. This way you can still run all your pci stuff at 133mhz, but you have to have ddr2100 memory, too, not the 1600. Try crucial.com for some cheap ddr2100.
Hope this helped. I dont look on this topic very often.
 
more..

Floating point has to do with the processor. Plug-ins are reliant upon this, and the AMD performs 3 times as many floating point operations as the Pentium 3. How much better, I dunno, but it outweighs it bigtime.
Another bit of coolness... the AMD 1.3 mhz with DDR is outperforming the 1.7Pentium 4 with rambus in almost everything.
Check out the price difference between these 2 processors on pricewatch.com You'll shit.
Then check out the difference between equal amounts of DDR and Rambus. Again, another diaper change.
Another note... I have the asus a7m266 motherboard. Not bad at all, so far.
Peace,
Paul
 
I've got a Digi 001 and run it on a 1.2 ghz Athalon in a Gigabyte GA-7DX motherboard with 512 Crutial DDR (PC 2100). My system is very stable and the second fastest on the Digi User Conference (DUC). Other useers have run into some problems getting their systems running in a fast and stable manner. Hard drive drivers and heat seem to be some of the most frequent post.

Is the DDR worth the extra cost? I think so. It doesn't cost that much extra if you buy direct from Crutial. I think I paid $102 for a 256 MB stick of PC2100. Computer review sites generally show that DDR gives you about 7% performance increase. Not alot, but something. I would guess that this is about right for the Digi also. However, in the future, new Athalon chips are said to make better use of the memory bandwith than current Athalon processors. So in about 6 months you will be able to upgrade to a 1.7 ghz Athalon, which will not only be unbelievable fast but also make better use of the DDR.

My system uses 2 40G Western Digital drives in a Promise Fast Track 100 PCI Raid card. I believe this card has contributed somewhat to my system's stability. I have the raid partitioned into 2 40G partitions. I use Drive C for programs and Drive D for audio storage. In addition I have a third IBM drive as master on IDE channel #1, but I found I get less plugin count and recording tracks when I use the IDE drive as audio storage, so now I use the PCI Raid exclusively. As of right now, I am very pleased with my setup and don't plan on changing anything. Good luck!!
 
ertgwrfwerfwefwef

Well said... Same thing I have, almost ;)
Any percentage is good when it comes to audio.
 
I'd wait til the price of DDR comes down a little more, because the value/performance doesnt add up. The performance increase is minimal for the $. Goto www.tomshardware.com for a full explanation on this issue.
 
...

Price shouldn't be that much of a problem... you can have 256mb for $105.00 Thats 512mb for $210... thats fantastic, I think. And, alot of the reviews vary, but I've gernerally read a 10% increase in performance over standard. This can be perfect for audio situations, which takes up alot of space everywhere.
 
DDR is a little more expensive. I just checked prices at www.crutial.com and 256 MB of DDR/PC2100 (the fastest!) was $107, while 256 MB of 133 memory was $97. In my view, memory speed affects every start, stop., record, edit, plugin, fade, loop.... So if I can get my whole system to just run 7-10% faster for $10-- the cost or a New Yorker pizza with one topping (not including delivery or a tip)-- to me, that a prety good deal. What is one more recording track worth at a live jig, if you need it? $10?

Over on the DUC we have been doing some performance test on PC and Macs. The "DAVEC" test is where you load 5 plugins on each track and see how many you can record. The 1.2 Athalon with DDR could get 30 tracks (my setup). The 1.33 Athalon hit 40. The digi has only 18 imputs, but the software will still record 24 tracks max. Interesting in itself. So all tracks are record enabled and aux tracks are opened with the 5 plugins to further increase the load until the whloe thing "craps out". There are a few people with the Asus A7V mobo and the 1.3 Athalon, so if they post on this test I could give you a pretty good idea on the DDR difference. But the Athalon with DDR is pretty intimidating!! We may never see those posts.
 
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