what motherboard

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c9-2001

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i'm about to build a new very powerful and i hope stable Daw. i'm gonna go with a dual athlonXP 1600+ what motherboard will let me use a dual athlonXP 1600+... i've seen the boards for the athlonMP's...
 
The XP does not have AMD's blessing to work in SMP mode, though I think the core is the same (ie, same performance). I've seen some sites mention using the XP in SMP mode. There are a few new AMD MP boards coming out right now, but I think the Tyan boards would be the stablest, as they've had dual AMD boards out for far longer than anyone else, and hence have had more time to eliminate bugs. Check AnandTech and Tom's Hardware for any reviews and benchmarks.

I believe the latest batch of boards were having chipset problems with USB 2.0, so some companies decided to ship their boards and issue a BIOS update later, and some companies are waiting for the chipset issue to be resolved.
 
I run a dual XP rig using a Tyan Tiger S2460 mobo which is the older design. The newer MPX styles are pretty cool but possibly a little less stable as they have only recently been released on the market.

XP's are not SMP certified by AMD, but are the same chip none the less. You are more than likely going to find them to work in SMP, but it is possible (1 instance that I know of for sure) that they won't.
 
aaronscool, what type of cpu's do you have... i want to get the fastest but stablest daw i can. what MB can run Dual Athlon1800MP or XP? i also want to do a dual 19inch setup, i was thinking about getting a g550...

i want to get one of these Carillon cases also... http://www.carillondirect.com/
 
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I have a dual XP 1600+ running windows 2000. Checkout the hardware sites for specific mobo testimonials. I'm working on a Tyan Tiger S2460 which uses the first generation MP chipset and is very stable. It is also not overclockable in any way.

The Matrox card is ok for dual monitors. Better cards are coming out soon with the new Nvidia 4th Generation chips that'll do dual Monitors pretty well too.

Unfortunately with fast Dual AMD CPU's you are going to have a very difficult time keeping it quiet. They need pretty good Heatsinks and Fans that tend to make a lot of noise. There are newer HSF's coming out that use 80mm Fans that are much quieter. Also my Mobo is really big and needs a big case to fit in. Make sure the case you buy will fit the larger motherboard you may get (check the internal dimensions etc.)

Check out:
http://www.plycon.com (fans and accessories)
http://www.2cpu.com (dualie website)
http://www.amdmb.com (great forums broken out by manufacturer)
 
aaronscool said:

The Matrox card is ok for dual monitors. Better cards are coming out soon with the new Nvidia 4th Generation chips that'll do dual Monitors pretty well too.

Unfortunately with fast Dual AMD CPU's you are going to have a very difficult time keeping it quiet. They need pretty good Heatsinks and Fans that tend to make a lot of noise. There are newer HSF's coming out that use 80mm Fans that are much quieter. Also my Mobo is really big and needs a big case to fit in. Make sure the case you buy will fit the larger motherboard you may get (check the internal dimensions etc.)
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i have a athlonXP 1600+ right now with a 5inch heat sink and a 8600rpm monster of a fan... its was real loud but i put car stereo sound proofing stuff in the case, it fixed every problem. the Carillon cases are very quiet, they make G4's seem loud...
 
i'm looking at going with a dual athlonxp or MP 1800+, but my dad gave me the idea of a dual 2.2gig P4 with 1 to 2gig of ram... he's paying for half of the cost so i don't care how much it cost, which would be better for a pure audio computer running nuendo/cubase/wavelab...etc...

for the P4's i've worked on, they suck for audio production. under nuendo the cpu was at 70-80%, this was on a 2gig P4 with 768Mb of ram under 98se... i copied the project to my computer, while playing back and recording my cpu never went over 30%
 
but my dad gave me the idea of a dual 2.2gig P4 with 1 to 2gig of ram
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The only way you can do this is with dual Xeons, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to spend that kind of money. Out of curiosity, I configured a dual 2.2 with 2 gigs of RAM at Dell, and the total comes to $6,155, sans monitor, and with only one 40GB hard drive. The RAM alone is over $2,000 (have to use ECC with Xeon). For that kind of loot, you could put together a small cluster of dual AMD rigs.
 
i can get a dual Xeon mother board cheap(my dad owns a computer company) so like i said money isn't a problem. i was thinking about just going with a dual athlonXP 1800+ or if i get a deal again i'll get a dual athlonXP 2000+. then get the steinberg link...
i have 2 80gig hard drives now(new still in the box) i may not go with 2 gig of ram, who really needs that much ram? i have 768 and its perfect, so i'll stay around there or just go to 1 gig.

As for the monitors, i'm gonna order them off www.ubid.com i'm gonna get (2) 17inch monitors or (2) 19 inch monitors(viewSonic)
 
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