What is the best amd cpu for recording?

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BigMike

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Also, what motherboard would be a good match for it. I already have a Delta66 and not want to build a top of the line PC around it.
 
XP 2000+. Volcano 7+ heatsink/fan. lots of DDR RAM.

Asus A7V333. On-board firewire, DDR 333, USB 2.0, on-board RAID, great performance. Or, the MSI KT333ARU. Same kinda features, but AFAIK no Firewire, but Bluetooth interface on-board. Cool, huh?

Intel Desktop boards guarantee compatibility. Not performance. As a matter of fact, in head-to-head tests they've been consistently been beaten by Gigabyte, Asus and even DFI boards. Time and again.

Also Intel boards have very few features onboard, just basics. No RAID, no USB 2.0, nothing, nada. Not recommended. The new 845 boards have started coming with onboard six-channel audio and USB 2.0, but that's about it.

If you wanna walk down the Pentium4 road, at least buy a decent board with some RDRAM. Maybe a Gigabyte 8ITXE. Supposedly the best Intel 850 chipset board in the business, and loaded with features, and a screamer of a performer too.

The Intel board story goes back to the days of the BX and the ZX chipsets. In those days, and upto the i810 chipset, Intel actually did have the edge in boards, as all the chinese and taiwanese (yes, Asus among them) actually made crap boards. There was really no alternative to Intel. Now, of course the situation's different.
 
Sangram said:
XP 2000+. Volcano 7+ heatsink/fan. lots of DDR RAM.

Asus A7V333. On-board firewire, DDR 333, USB 2.0, on-board RAID, great performance. Or, the MSI KT333ARU. Same kinda features, but AFAIK no Firewire, but Bluetooth interface on-board. Cool, huh?

Intel Desktop boards guarantee compatibility. Not performance. As a matter of fact, in head-to-head tests they've been consistently been beaten by Gigabyte, Asus and even DFI boards. Time and again.

Also Intel boards have very few features onboard, just basics. No RAID, no USB 2.0, nothing, nada. Not recommended. The new 845 boards have started coming with onboard six-channel audio and USB 2.0, but that's about it.

If you wanna walk down the Pentium4 road, at least buy a decent board with some RDRAM. Maybe a Gigabyte 8ITXE. Supposedly the best Intel 850 chipset board in the business, and loaded with features, and a screamer of a performer too.

The Intel board story goes back to the days of the BX and the ZX chipsets. In those days, and upto the i810 chipset, Intel actually did have the edge in boards, as all the chinese and taiwanese (yes, Asus among them) actually made crap boards. There was really no alternative to Intel. Now, of course the situation's different.
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I'd rather have stability and compatibility any day when compared to all out speed.

But what the hell do I know, I just build them.
 
Uh, oh, sorry. Did I mention that compatibility is really not an issue nowadays?

Have you worked with ISA and Windows 3.1? Assigned IRQs manually? Have incompatibilities when you put two hard drives of two different brand on one IDE cable? Seen mysterious cases of CDROMs not working on mobos? Back in '95, these were the norms.

I've been building since the P100 days. These days it's all screwdrivers. Mostly. Incompatibilities usually don't exist anymore. The givens are now givens, it's all about the performance. The newest breeds of boards and chips are fairly compatible with 99.99% of hardware around, and stability is also a given. I haven't had a dud in longer than I can remember.
 
Sangram said:
Uh, oh, sorry. Did I mention that compatibility is really not an issue nowadays?

Have you worked with ISA and Windows 3.1? Assigned IRQs manually? Have incompatibilities when you put two hard drives of two different brand on one IDE cable? Seen mysterious cases of CDROMs not working on mobos? Back in '95, these were the norms.

I've been building since the P100 days. These days it's all screwdrivers. Mostly. Incompatibilities usually don't exist anymore. The givens are now givens, it's all about the performance. The newest breeds of boards and chips are fairly compatible with 99.99% of hardware around, and stability is also a given. I haven't had a dud in longer than I can remember.
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yup, I sure have worked with ISA, Windows 3.1, DOS, blah blah.

It's all screwdrivers, until you discover incompatibilities between certain hardware/chipset/driver combos, like I did this past weekend with a VIA/ATI/Win98 combo.

Before you try to get into a pissing contest, realize I was stating my opinion, based on my years of experience.

Excuse the hell out of me.
 
Polaris & Sangram - Well I'm always happy to jump in the middle of a pissing contest... but since I probably have more PC building experiance than both of you combined, I will anyways.

You are both right to a point. Sangram is right in saying that the ASUS boards are very good, and that Intel boards generally have less features than others. In fact the last Intel boards that I had mucho hands-on with were P3 boards that had more compatibility problems than their ASUS contemporaries. If you scan those site that do exhaustive testing of mobos (Tomshardware for one) you will find that Intel boards are really middle-of-the-road in both perfomance and compatibility.

Polais is right when he says that there still are some compatibilty problems out there. Yes it's better than it used to be. but there is still the potential for a occasional bite in the ass. I posted some weeks ago about a particularly hellish XP upgrade fiasco with an ECS motherboard. Only after trying two motherboards, killing a hard drive, and giving up on that board (a different brand worked fine) did I discover that my problems were by no means unique, that board just had some real compatibility issues.

Big Mike - if you have your heart set on AMD, go for it. Either AMD or an Intel P4 can make a fine DAW system. All I would say is that you might want to email the makers of your music hardware and ask them what motherboards they have tested it on, and if they are aware of any compatibility issues.
 
Its great....

that so many people have decades of building experience, but since I know of 15 yr olds who put together P4 water cooled monsters these days, it don't matter much.

Its pretty much common sense to aim for the masses, everyone will be moving towards Win XP, and video/audio cards are so damn cheap for midrange performance that nobody will be using cards more then a a few years old soon. that will mean almost everything will be made after 2000, so its almost assured to be compliant with the vast majority of hardware out there.

if your going for top of the line, wait till the new 333FSB thoroughbreds come out then get a 2200+ after the price drops (its about 200$ right now). The Asus A7V333 and Gigabyte kt333 are good, as well as the soyo dragon ultra. search for any possible conflicts on computer forums, and then buy acording to your taste.

SirRiff
 
Along the same lines that SirRiff was talking about, the best CPU would be the best bang for your buck CPU. Whether you buy AMD or Intel, here's a good thing to keep in mind. Look to buy a CPU that is 3 speeds slower than the fastest on the market. This is normally where you get the sharpest drop-off in price but still retain excellent performance.

Also beware of buying a CPU/MB combo that cannot be upgraded or it's upgrade path will be extinct in 6 months. It's a heck off a lot cheaper to purchase just a CPU instead of haveing to get a MB and possibly memory to go along with it.
 
this arrives monday - for 700 bucks.

ASUS A7V333 KT333 MB W/ ATA133, USB 2.0, 5.1 AUDIO
AMD Athlon® XP-2000+ Processor AS22
60GB 7200 RPM UDMA 133
512MB PC2700 333MHZ DDR MEMORY
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Nvidia TNT-2 M64 32MB AGP
AMD Certified ATX Medium Tower Case - 350 Watt

from www.cyberpowerpc.com

pimp as hell eh?

oh yeah, Delta44 and (2) mxl603s already arrived...cant wait to try em out.
 
shackrock said:
this arrives monday - for 700 bucks.

ASUS A7V333 KT333 MB W/ ATA133, USB 2.0, 5.1 AUDIO
AMD Athlon® XP-2000+ Processor AS22
60GB 7200 RPM UDMA 133
512MB PC2700 333MHZ DDR MEMORY
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Nvidia TNT-2 M64 32MB AGP
AMD Certified ATX Medium Tower Case - 350 Watt

from www.cyberpowerpc.com

pimp as hell eh?

oh yeah, Delta44 and (2) mxl603s already arrived...cant wait to try em out.
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I would have bought this instead (actually I will in the near future):

http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11167998&m=488&cat=490&scat=491

http://www.vprmatrix.com/CurrentModels.asp
 
shackrock said:
this arrives monday - for 700 bucks.

ASUS A7V333 KT333 MB W/ ATA133, USB 2.0, 5.1 AUDIO
AMD Athlon® XP-2000+ Processor AS22
60GB 7200 RPM UDMA 133
512MB PC2700 333MHZ DDR MEMORY
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Nvidia TNT-2 M64 32MB AGP
AMD Certified ATX Medium Tower Case - 350 Watt

from www.cyberpowerpc.com

pimp as hell eh?

oh yeah, Delta44 and (2) mxl603s already arrived...cant wait to try em out.
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Looks like a pretty good deal. Did you contact M Audio? They had told me 3 months ago that their Delta cards were incompatible with Via chipsets.

Others have said otherwise though. I guess it depends on the tech guy you talk to.
 
Yep, the Delta/Via incompatibility depends on the guy you talk to, some of us were told Asus7v333 is ok and others were told to avoid Via. Make of it what you want. I´ll go with SoYo:D
 
As far as the Delta is concerned, it really depends on the VIA chipset. I had no trouble with an older Athlon Slot-A, but as soon as I moved into a Duron (Via KT133 chipset) I had TONS of issues. However, switching over to a different KT133 board (using the RAID controller instead) alleviated many problems. Really, it depends on how well the chipset handles DMA transfers, and whether or not you've got a bus-hogging video card :) I'd really like to know how they work with G3/G4 Macs, as I'm contemplating along those lines.

-Daniel
 
yeah i talked to many of them.... a majority agreed that the one i had selected there would be fine.
 
Its funny how you guys are all so concerned about having the fastest system but use delta 44s and 66s. I would get a more modest cpu like an xp 1800 or so, use 1 80GB HD with a partition, even 256mb of ddr and upgrade later to 512 but with a better soundcard like a lynx2, RME or delta 1010. Having used the delta 66 for a year some time ago, I know what its capable of and what its not capable of and while its good in the prousmer range, its not a pro card. Especially against the next generation of cards and converters.
 
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JuSumPilgrim said:
Its funny how you guys are all so concerned about having the fastest system but use delta 44s and 66s. I would get a more modest cpu like an xp 1800 or so, use 1 80GB HD with a partition, even 256mb of ddr and upgrade later to 512 but with a better soundcard like a lynx2, RME or delta 1010. Having used the delta 66 for a year some time ago, I know what its capable of and what its not capable of and while its good in the prousmer range, its not a pro card. Especially against the next generation of cards and converters.
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well, the difference in converters between a Delta 1010 and a Delta 44/66 aren't that great.

RME, maybe, but not the difference between 2 cards sporting the same res in the same company.
 
Polaris20 said:


well, the difference in converters between a Delta 1010 and a Delta 44/66 aren't that great.

RME, maybe, but not the difference between 2 cards sporting the same res in the same company.
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I beg to differ. I think the dif bet the 66 and 1010 is considerable and will probably vary from one computer to the next as computer noise level varies (the converters on the 1010 are housed while the converters on the 66 are on the card). They also use dif converters. Its not just more ins and outs...in terms of sound quality the 66 and 1010 are in dif leagues. I can here a dif just listening to a CD using the D/A of each card. They sound dif. The 1010 is clearly more open, has better clarity, better imaging, better separation, and better everything.
 
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