Need your advice on computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter bobbo
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Bobbo,

Congrats on your decision. I wish you much success. At least you won't ever feel like you didn't get enough input before making a purchase. :)

Let us know how it all works out.
 
memory prices should come down in december.. and avoid western digital because of recalls... happy recording...

- eddie -
 
In regards to the 2 vs 1 hard drive debate.I have spoken to severalPC recording wiz types all agree it is a better thing to have a seperate drive designated strictly for music. In the big guy club RAID5 ( random array of inexpensive disk) is "THE" way to get mucho multiple tracks of HD recording. I almost bought a used system from a post production studio spectral hardware with "studio tracks software" This was in a pro studio and had the capability of over 200 virtual tracks in banks of sixteen.Operating on 4 hard drives and a 486 computer.The fact that a 486 was capable of 16 simultaneous tracks made me look into this multiple drive issue. Although I am still in the process of designing my PC for digital recording so I don't have proof of the pudding. i am going for the multiple hard drive method. I might end up spending an extra $100 on this vs 1 big one and of course I could partition the big one. One thing that I can do with 2 drives and not with 1 big one
is get a removable docking station for my music HD thus allowing me to take my work over to my fellow musicians PC HD recording system and continue our work there and still have a functioning non music based PC at home.
 
TAE:

RAID has nothing to do with efficiency, it has to do with data INTEGRITY. Depending on the level, it is a means of data striping/redundancy over multiple disks. You can have a drive puke without losing your critical data or even having the system go down.

Also, it is my guess that part of the reason they were able to get 16 tracks on a 486 is more memory than any of us have ever seen and some very efficient software... Which is one problem that I have with n-Track...it's kind of a dog when you get up there in tracks.

You are right though that there are some great advantages to having two or more drives. If you can afford it, then do it. I might have been a bit to hastey by saying that it might not make a difference for what we do because I'm coming from the standpoint of only recording one or two tracks simultaneously. If you have a big-ass soundcard and are recording 16 tracks at the same time...well, that's another story altogether.

Eddie:

Man I hope you're right. I'm guessing that they won't come down until Q1 of 2000. I'm thinking that december is a HUGE month for computer sales...and if they can rape the market they will. From what I've gathered, the whole "shortage" is a crock anyway. Sort of a Diamond/Harley Davidson/Oil Company sort of deal. Freakin ridiculous. When I upgraded my machine a few months ago I was thinking..."I'll get that extra 64MB next month when I can afford it." Man, I never thought that prices would triple! Bastards :) Good advice about WD hard drives. Man I hate em so much.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Here's a rundown on the PC processor debate (i am without Mac knowledge, so I will refrain from mentioning them):

PII/PIII: these are based on exactly the same architecture, except PIII's have support for some new instructions aimed at speeding up 3d graphics. The real advantage of a PIII is they're available at higher clock rates, so they'll run faster. PII would still get the job done though.

Celeron: this is an intel product, just like the PII/PIII. It's essentially a PII lite. The main attraction of these is the fact that they get the job done for dirt cheap. I really don't recommend one if you can afford better though.

Athlon: Also known as the K7, AMD's Athlon is rignt now the fastest x86 chip on the market. However, it's also the most expensive, and motherboard support is currently shaky. Personally, I want one REAL BAD.

"floating points": the floating point thing way back up there refers to the performance of the FPU, the part of a microprocessor that does floating point math. Floating point math is used extensively in 3d graphics, but to the best of my knowledge audio products don't use it much. Intel has traditionally had far superior FPU performance over AMD, but with Athlon this is no longer true.

Bottom line: any of the above processors will get the job done, and whatever you buy will be outdated in about 3 weeks anyway.

Screw ford, get a firebird.

-Nate K
 
Bull. AMD claims to have the fastest processor every single damn year. I'm sick of hearing it because it hasn't been true since thier 486 processors back in 1993. (when I believe they were still locked into an information share with Intel)

I just visited AMD's site and found exactly what I figured I'd find. Benchmarks showing the Athalon wasting the PIII by a whole buttload of points in every area. I saw the same thing just before I made the dreadful mistake of purchasing a K6-2. Bastards.

Take a look at some independant benchmarks. ANY independant benchmarks. You'll see the AMD processors right up there in business applications but dogging terribly when it comes to multimedia. No big suprise really. Here's one showing an overclocked Celeron 300a beating an Athalon @ 420. http://ars-technica.com/cpu/2q99/simd-shootout-4.html There are a ton more out there if you'd care to look.

Yes the PIII is very similar to the PII aside from 70 new instructions. However the Athalon is still based on K6 technology. I see that they're even still trying to push that 3D-Now garbage...sad sad sad.

About 5 months ago I purchased a Celeron 400 to replace my K6-2 400 system. With basically the same supporing hardware (at the time), the Celeron blasted the K6-2. And I mean the two weren't even comparable. Now that my machine is really souped up I can't believe that I was ever stuck with that K6.

Digital audio should be very FPU intensive. I can't see integer precision being good enough at all. Since the Athalon is more expensive than the PIII, there is absolutely no reason on this earth to take the risk of purchasing one...unless you believe AMD's benchmarks.

I do agree with you on one point however. It makes much more sense to purchase a PII now than it does a Celeron. You're not saving that much money.

And I guess that I should say that the AMD processor can run decently if you want to spend a lot of time tweeking and messing around with various 3d-later drivers. I remember spending quite a bit of time getting my AMD to work well with nVidia TNT video and Quake II. After many months of waiting I finally got that sucker cookin! Q2 demos were blasting at about 42FPS. Man I was happy. Until I stuffed a Celeron into my machine and got 63FPS with absolutely no tweeking.

Slackmaster 2000
 
re: fpu stuff, floating point operations are by nature less accurate and slower than integer math. Since digital audio is neatly quantized into 16 bits (or maybe 24 or 32 on higher end stuff), digital audio data lends itself quite nicely to integer arithmatic.

If 3dnow is so pathetic, why did Intel clone it for their new PIII instuctions? ;)
 
BTW, I just checked out that benchmark page, and the chip being being benchmarked is a
K6-3. K6-3 is not the same thing as an Athlon. (you'll notice I didn't even consider the K6-2 and K6-3 as being worthy of mention on my earlier post). Not trying to start a fight or anything, just thought I'd point that out.

-Nate K
 
Oops. Got me there on that page. :)

However, you really should know that digital audio processing can be quite fpu intensive, especially when you start adding in DX effects. Here's a quote from the writer of n-Track Studio, Flavio Antonio:

"Regarding to the CPU brand, Intel processors should be preferred because their floating point performances are considerably better than that of their competitors, and the program uses a lot of floating point math. The difference becomes particularly noticeable when applying realtime effects."

Anyway, ya got me on the Athalon. Sorry for overreacting. It's a pretty quick chip and it's suprising that AMD has beat Intel to the market with a 7th generation processor. We'll see how long the thrill lasts though. Intel hasn't started to play yet.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I always miss out on the fun. I wish this board recorded IPs like most others do ... find out who this G4 dude is. People never seem to be able to flame using their own name ... funny. Oh, and just for the record, I own a G4 (you wouldn't believe the price, gotta love working in the biz), and I wouldn't record anything (multi-tracked, anyway) on it.
 
PIII? G4?
People, I gotta settle the score.
In my book nothing will ever top the good 'ole Commodore!!!

Peace! ;) (as we french say... how very "hors propos"...)
-Tag; you're it!
(returning after a much-needed vacation)
 
Yeah, I loved that 300ms boot.
Mine still works! 19 years later.
What were these other guys thinking?
 
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