How much will upgrading my PC help me?

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twonky

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I am considering upgrading my current PC for a newer shinier one.
Right now I have a PIII Gateway 500mHz w/ about 356mgs of ram. I am running a 10gig SCSI and a 60gig IDE. I am tracking and mixing in Samplitude 6 using an ADAT as the A/D converter w/ the ADAT edit soundcard.

I am also planning to buy a MOTU 2408MKII.

I LOVE Samplitude 6 so much its almost embarrasing. I dont really feel the need to upgrade to version 7 as far as features go as I have yet to fully tap the features of version 6.

Sometimes my systems will act sort of crazy when there are a lot of tracks and plug ins running. And I would like to start using MIDI and softsynths and process track in Amplitube in real time. That, I cannot do right now.

So, I ask you, getting the newest and fastest stuff, what can I expect?

about how much $$ do I need to budget for the PC?

Thanks for any information


Twonky
 
Answers for these kind of questions hugely depend on the budget you have.

Running a lot of plugins sucks away a lot of cpu power so upgrading that should be your first concern.

If money is no object? Yes, get the latest and the greatest and you'll be happy for quite a while.

If you want to spend it more wisely, go for a new motherboard and a cpu running at roughly 2GHz (lots of horsepower yet affordable). Some will say go for AMD, others Intel. The best answer will probably be that with both chips you can build excellent DAWs if you do it right.

You may want to keep your old memory, then you'd need a motherboard that supports SDRAM but I'd say, upgrade that to DDR while your at it.

How much? Don't know what it all costs in the US but my guess is $200-300.
 
I will have roughly $700 (U.S.).

In laymans terms, what would DDR ram do that SDRam isnt?

Also the big debate, so I read, is Intel vs. AMD...well AMD is is a lot cheaper. Is it a bad idea to base your decision on that?
 
As far as ram goes, I have had great use with my RDRAM. Just thought I would throw that in...just in case anyone cares ;)

micro
 
nothing else to offer...just wanted to get in my 200th post!! yay!

-Where's the confetti and balloons?
 
twonky said:
I will have roughly $700 (U.S.).

In laymans terms, what would DDR ram do that SDRam isnt?

Also the big debate, so I read, is Intel vs. AMD...well AMD is is a lot cheaper. Is it a bad idea to base your decision on that?
Click to expand...

Using DDR will mean more memory bandwidth which results in an overall performance boost over SDRAM. Depends on the application but 10-20% is a decent estimate I think.
Also important: Going for DDR now will give you a better upgrade path in the future. SDRAM is losing ground rapidly these days. It's old.

Going for the cheapest? In this case in my humble opinion a good enough reason.
 
microchip said:
As far as ram goes, I have had great use with my RDRAM. Just thought I would throw that in...just in case anyone cares ;)
Click to expand...

RDRAM is way more expensive than DDR, only available to Intel machines and hardly has an edge over DDR performance wise if any. But I believe you instantly when you say it works great for you. :)

And congrats :D
 

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Late last year I upgraded from a P3 setup to a P4 setup and I spent around US$350. I dont know how much the MOTU will cost but 700 bucks might just be enough get you a decent P4 machine on DDR with an Asus mobo.

Will it help you? Not sure, but it did wonders for me.
 
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