Onboard audio and raid question

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Hollowman

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I am wanting to build a computer specifically for audio. I want to buy an Athlon XP 1900 and are looking for a mobo for it. I have looked at some mobo's including the following:

ASUS A7V266-E, 266 Mhz KT266a Socket A, DDR, Audio
MSI K7T266a Pro2 RU-Raid Socket A, DDR USB 2.0

These were recommended to me. I know there are some discussion about mobo's for athlons and I will search for them for info. My question is about the ASUS. It seems that it has onboard audio. I have heard that this is bad. Is this correct????

About raid.......I have seen posts that it can really help as speed is concerned, but have also read that it can cause problems. If I buy a mobo with raid, I assume I don't have to use it. I think it would be nice to have it. Just to see if it works and if it doesn't it would be nice to turn it off or something. Or isn't this possible?????
 
Onboard audio is bad if you are planning on using it for recording. The A/D converters are probalby less than stellar. My ASUS K7V mobo has onboard audio too. Its fairly easy to disable by moving a couple jumpers and shouldn't be a problem once you've done so.

I don't think RAID is really necessary any more if you have a fast 7200RPM+ ATA100 hard drive. I have a 7200RPM ATA66 drive and can get 30 tracks of 24/44.1 and barely see the hard disk meter go over 5%. If you are doing 24/96 you might (will) need it.
 
You don't have to use the RAID on your mobo but as far as testing and turning it off if you don't like it - well, that's not really how it works.

You need multiple drives for RAID and once you configured your RAID setup, the drives are sort of dependent on eachother and you need to reconfigure them for non-RAID use. The only problem is that these moves requires wipingall data off the drives.

My suggestion would be to wait with RAID until you feel that yiou need it, unless you have a couple of grand burning a hole in your pocket.

I think the ultimate setup would be one drive for OS and app and four discs in a RAID0+1 configuration for your audio. That's five HDDs though and I don't think that the performance benefits will bee too big.

After all, RAID was designed for data redundency, not performance. Redundant Array of Inexpensive Discs.

/Ola
 
Well, I doubt you need a couple grand to try out a RAID configuration. You can get a couple hard drives really cheap and try it out. Its not going to hurt anything, except Ola is right in that if you set them up in a RAID configuration, you will have to wipe them and start over if you have problems. Besides, you don't NEED a RAID mobo to do RAID. Win2K will let you set up multiple hard drives in a RAID configuration using any mobo. Not sure if it is as efficient though - I sort of doubt it. If you do decide to do a RAID setup, you will want a separate hard drive for the OS, etc. as Ola pointed out.

One more thing just to clarify. Even though RAID was designed for data redundancy, a RAID 0 configuration (which is what you will most likely want to use) has no redundant data. It simply stripes the data, putting half on each hard disk to maximize transfer speeds.
 
I integrated an IDE RAID based system in January. My experience and current thinking is the bit depth / sample rate and RAID performance are fatally inversely proportional beyond 24/44.1.
The RAID controller of the ABIT 133BX also handles ATA 66/100. So it wasn't too surprising to find the sobering performance see saw exists just using ATA 66 or 100 without RAID. Then again what is the worst to happen ... "what am i going to do with all of these extra drives now that i've installed a new barely over 100 dollar mobo?"

hehehe - this being deranged thing isn't so bad once I got used to it. what was i tal .. ah yes,
Using RAID mode 0 the sustained throughput varies between 45 and 50 MB/s IME. Is the 24/44.1 limit worth the extra 10 or so MB/s? For my purposes it is Not. In January the prorec.com TBird spec wasn't posted and IDE RAID DAW experience then seemed pretty limited. Now though I can't see why most wouldn't build the RYO 2001 machine unless they are waiting to build the anticipated dual processor system.
 
It is true that RAID 0 has no redundancy, and is therefor often considered "not true RAID". It even has worse redundancy than a single drive as if one fails, you'll loose all data on both drives. Write speed is better than a single drive though.

Due to the lack of redundancy, RAID 0 is often coupled with RAID 1, making a RAID 0+1 configuration, which has both increased read/write performance and redundancy. However, RAID 1 has the drawback of "waisting" as much HDD space as you get. E.g. if you use two 20G HDD in a RAID 1 configuration, you'll get 20G worth of storage.

IMO, you would want RAID 1 if you want performance benefits for a DAW. Read performance is the most critical and that's where RAID 1 shines. It's just not very cost effective, but as pointed out, IDE drives are cheap nowadays.

Software RAID is what gnarled is talking about when he says that e.g. W2k can do RAID on any mobo. It is cheaper than HardWare raid as you do nod need a RAID controller card (or built in RAID on the mobo). He is quite right that it is not as fast as HW RAID. It is only used if you need the redundency benefits of RAID but are not concerned with performance.

Yada yada yada

/Ola
 
Mobo

Greetings,

I have investigated the MOBO issue, but not the raid one...

Soyo Dragon Plus mobo is the best rated MOBO by all the "performance" reviews i have seen. Very good performance, and apparently almost perfect stability.

its definately worth investigating.

As for raid, there are so many kick ass home recorded projects that i have heard come off a 7200, that it is ovbiously not need to make awesome music.
SirRiff
 
Dang...

crap!... somebody just beat me to it...

The Soyo K7V Dragon Plus is THEE way to go...

as previously mentioned... performance that outranks all the other KT266a chipset motherboards (the KT266a being the fastest Athlon chipset at the moment) and rock-solid stability.

As for onboard audio... well... the Soyo comes with a better onboard chip than the Asus.. but neither is really worth much... just go out and get a Midiman Audiophile 24/96 at least.. $150 at Guitar Center all day long...

WATYF
 
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