Its time for a new machine but were do I begin?

[blazingstrings]

Hey guys,
I have a few questions about building a new pc for recording.

I have been using a 2.4ghz Celeron pc with 640mb of PC2100 ram and a AGP video card with a ATI on it. My sound card is now a Delta 44.
I am running Sonar 3 Studio edition and reason 3.0 and few plugins.

Now I'm not looking for the lastes and most fastest monster of a machine but I "NEED" and upgrade.

Can you guys give me a few sugestions on good decently price parts like Mother Board(what brand and chipset?), processor(amd or intel. best value for the money, ect ect.), and Ram thats compatable as that I am sort of lost as to what ram speeds work with what MOBO's and such oh and what a good dual head vid card is. AGP or what ever.

As I said I'm a bit lost as to what to get or look at and what are good componants.

Any help here would make my day ....

Thank again.

-Blaze

 

[dgatwood]

Can you guys give me a few sugestions on good decently price parts like Mother Board(what brand and chipset?), processor(amd or intel. best value for the money, ect ect.), and Ram thats compatable as that I am sort of lost as to what ram speeds work with what MOBO's and such oh and what a good dual head vid card is. AGP or what ever.

AGP is dead, dead, dead. Get something with PCI Express (PCIe). (NOT VIA.)

While you're at it, try to find something with a TI firewire chipset integrated if somebody builds one. (NOT VIA.)

Since you have a PCI audio card, make sure you get a board with at least one legacy PCI slot for that, since PCIe slots aren't compatible with parallel PCI cards.

Finally, get something with a 64-bit-compatible CPU---either an AMD64 (NOT VIA) or one of the 64-bit variants of the P4. In the long run, you'll be glad you did.

 

[blazingstrings]

Ok so PCI slots are kind of disapering then too?
My plan is to keep my old PC around for other purposes, so what if I was to look at a new interface what would be a good way to go? Firewire? USB 2.0?
I dont need a ton of in's and outs 4ins 4 outs at most.

Ok I have heard about PCI express, so I'm taking notes here for that.
And no VIA chip sets, What is a good chip then?

Ok TI firewire chipset noted.

Thanks thus far dgatwood, I'm going to start looking at stuff as soon as we buy our next house.

Thanks again for any further help.

-Blaze

 

[RWhite]

While I would disagree that AGP is "dead", I generally agree with what dg is saying - namely, if you are going to upgrade, get something that will be usuable for as long as possible. So while not too many people are trunning 64 bit OSs yet, you might as well buy a chip that CAN run it (Athlon 64) and get the newer video slot technology, so you wont have to upgrade again for awhile.

 

[blazingstrings]

Very good points here thanks!

I was thinking that I may be best to not just buy older stuff for sake of cost since it may just be more expensive.

I should be future proof for a little while when I do this. No need to wast money.

Keep the info coming please, I would ike top hear what others have as far as specs, models and manufactures.

Thanks again.

-Blaze

 

[bgavin]

I favor the AMD/64 and nForce chipset boards. If you want to go this direction, look for a board powered with the nForce3 chipset. The new nForce4 chipset has been tested and found to slow down the machine.

Link to RME Testing of nForce4 Chipsets

If you are not an AMD fan, go with an Intel Pentium and the Intel 875 chipset, as pointed out on the RME site. Skip the cheapie Celerons and cheapie AMD processors.

I cannot see where PCIe for video would be a help for DAW work. YMMV. I use a Matrox G450 dual-head which is a fast 2D card, but useless for 3D and gaming. My DAW is dedicated, so the fast 2D performance of the G450 works well for me.

Corsair XMS 2T-cycle memory in matched pairs is ideal for the AMD/64 boards.

 

[dgatwood]

I cannot see where PCIe for video would be a help for DAW work. YMMV. I use a Matrox G450 dual-head which is a fast 2D card, but useless for 3D and gaming. My DAW is dedicated, so the fast 2D performance of the G450 works well for me.

You'll whistle a different tune when Vista comes out and starts taking advantage of that GPU performance in the OS. Mac OS X users know what I'm talking about. A GPU can make a huge difference in UI performance if the OS utilizes it to its full potential.

PCIe also serves to future proof the hardware. New AGP cards these days are mostly kludged PCI Express cards with a bridge chip so that the board vendors won't have to do extra work. As AGP becomes less popular, those hacks will become quite a bit more expensive than PCI Express cards.

Also, PCI Express isn't limited to video cards. The Mac hardware market tends to drive a lot of high-end audio hardware design, and Mac desktops don't have parallel PCI anymore. They use PCIe exclusively. Thus, it's probably safe to assume that future designs by companies like DigiDesign, for example, will be PCI Express, and that PCI versions (if available at all) will be bridged designs that cost more and perform poorly by comparison.

Thus, IMHO, it makes the most sense to get just enough legacy hardware support to handle your existing hardware needs, and get as much modern hardware as possible in the remaining space. It maximizes the amount of time you can go without replacing the hardware, and in the long run, it may actually end up costing less, too.

 

[bgavin]

You'll whistle a different tune when Vista comes out and starts taking advantage of that GPU performance in the OS.

Having done hardware since the PC inception, I have whistled a large number of new tunes.

My point was PCIe video isn't a pressing requirement in a DAW because the video work load simply isn't there. Using PCIe for sound card interfaces is a different matter altogether, but that was not my point.

As to PCIe sound cards, every technology starts out as a 1.0 product, and introduces a whole new set of bugs. I don't like Rev 1.0 boards, nor do I like Rev 1.0 drivers. The user can either put up with bugs, or wait for the later revisions.

If the reader wants to live on the bleeding edge of new hardware and drivers, that's his choice. For example, the nForce4 PCIe boards have been tested as inferior performers to older nForce3 boards. A few years from now this will all be obsolete, and everybody will be off chasing a different hot technology. Tomorrow never comes.

Bus performance has always been where it's at. When Intel introduced PCI at 33 MHz, it was intended to reach 256 MHz as card technology improved. PCIe future-proofs nothing. PCIe will run its course and die, same ISA and Local-Bus.

The requestor wants to upgrade from a Celeron to a better platform. I expect every Mac owner to pipe up and say "buy a Mac", so that is anticipated, but irrelevant. He wants to upgrade, not replace. His existing sound card is a standard PCI card which is useless in a PCIe environment.

 

[travelin travis]

very well put..........let everyone else be the guinea pig, throwing down gobs of cash and experiencing all the bugs of the latest technology. i'll settle for tried and true anyday, with the added bonus of being cheaper.