Motherboard for Fireface

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jrasia
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Jrasia

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I'm about to purchase a RME Fireface 800, so I'm looking to upgrade my PC to a motherboard that has intergrated Fireware in it already.

I currently have an AMD Althon 3200 XP that I purchased not too long ago, so it would be nice if the motherboard could still remain backward compatible with my current CPU, yet still allow me to upgrade in the future.

Can someone recommend a MB that works well with the Fireface yet still meets my system requirements, or is this asking too much, and I'm just better off dishing out the money for a totally new system.

I'm running XP btw.

Regards,

Jason
 
Someone here had an issue with the onboard Firewire and a Firepod that was was fixed by installing a Firewire card.
 
I'm using an Asus K8V SE Deluxe with an Athlon 64 3000. On the FF800 I can easily record 12 or more tracks at once at 88.2K/24 bit. CPU meter at less than 10%. The Asus has on-board fw 400. But, the fw shares an IRQ with the AGP slot (cannot be changed in the BIOS). You would think this would be a problem but it isn't. If you are using XP SP2 you need to make sure it has the Microsoft patch for fw. XP SP1 does not have this fw problem. You might be perfectly fine running with what you have. PCI fw cards are cheap. If you were to upgrade I can't recommend a MB but I do know the Athlon dual chips are getting great reviews for DAW speed. Also, there are PCI 800 fw cards now at 64 bit.
 
apl said:
Any reason not to get a Firewire card?
Click to expand...

I'd always heard that this isn't nearly as fast. Something about the limitations of the 33 MHz PCI bus.

I currently have an AMD Althon 3200 XP that I purchased not too long ago, so it would be nice if the motherboard could still remain backward compatible with my current CPU, yet still allow me to upgrade in the future.
Click to expand...

Sell your 3200. Since AMD discontinued them too soon, the price for them has jumped recently. You could probably make a tidy profit by selling yours now, and then use that to get a 64 bit chip (and of course, MoBo).

Failing that, if you're still looking for SocketA MoBos, I'd recommend Epox' 8RDA6+PRO. Native firewire, SIX serial ATA sockets, and an nforce2MCP chipset; can't go wrong.
 
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