words from a salesman

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ibrc

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I had a salesman tell me the Celeron type proccesors are horrible for recording and I should not attempt to use it. Does this hold any water?

I have a 2.80 GHz Celeron, 512 ram, 40 GB.
I thought it would be ok for Sonar and maybe project 5 or Reason.

I'm more of a analog guy. This is my first pc based system.
 
Its true.

You're better off spending money on an Athlon system rather than going with a Celeron processor if you're looking to buy a new low cost system at this point and trying to save some money.
 
Well, he's right to an extent, though if you'll already got one, don't run right out and buy a new system.

My 1.3Ghz Celeron notebook runs Reason just fine, btw.

But you may want to upgrade your chip, which you should be able to do.
 
ibrc said:
I had a salesman tell me the Celeron type proccesors are horrible for recording and I should not attempt to use it. Does this hold any water?

I have a 2.80 GHz Celeron, 512 ram, 40 GB.
I thought it would be ok for Sonar and maybe project 5 or Reason.

I'm more of a analog guy. This is my first pc based system.
Click to expand...
That should be more than enough to do serious multitrack recording.

I'd bet it would smoke my "DAW" which is a P4 @ 2.0 GHz when it came to CPU intensive operations (S/W reverb, etc.) so don't sell it short!

You might wanna direct your funds to getting more HD space and a DVD burner to keep the humongous drive clean and tidy.
 
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Cool, thanks guys. I couldn't pass this up. It had 400.00 in rebates so it ended up costing me 699.00. The only thing that sucks is it doesn't have firewire. I figured it might be a little slow but it would still work alright. This is kind of an experiment to see if I want to upgrade to a tower.

um, what chip are we speaking of? remember I'm a analog guy:) but I can upgrade if need be.

I think I've settled on the Lexicon Omega. It looks pretty good from what I've seen. Reason rocks but it's a bit more than I need. Now for some monitors.
 
Actually a Celreon 2.8 and a P4 2.0 would probably be sorda similar. My money would still be on the P4 for most stuff since the only real reason for a 2.8 Celeron is to sell cheap computers with a high MHz number. The 128k L2 cache is nowhere enough for the P4 20 stage pipleine so it spends alot of time twiddling its thumbs. Probably work fine for basic DAW stuff, but it would realistically be about like a P4 1.8 or so. My thinking (and I could be wrong) is an fx plugin is gonna be lots of small repetitive algorithm. So several different plugins might cause lots of L2 cache misses on a Celeron, causing it to run out of gas much sooner than much slower P4s and Athlons. Relatively speaking, the earlier P3 Celerons were more efficicient clock to clock with their 10 stage pipeline (I think) and 256 k L2 cache. At the time they were mainstream tech they were a good cpu for cheap...
Anyways, if the Celeron isn't uctting it, fortunately it should be fairly easy to put an actual P4 in the computer if needed. You'd just have to do a little research and find out what could be installed in that particular setup...
 
Dude, Thanks for that comparison. I'll set it up as it stands. If I have problems or if it's slow I will upgrade it for sure. For the most part my set up will be pretty simple. no more than 10 tracks, sparse effects minus my distortion freak tendacies:)
 
Polaris20 said:
My 1.3Ghz Celeron notebook runs Reason just fine, btw.
Click to expand...
Not totally sure but isn't the 1.3GHz Celeron still based on the PIII/Tualatin core? If so, that would make a lot of difference. A PIII is a lot more powerful than a PIV at the same speed.
 
christiaan said:
Not totally sure but isn't the 1.3GHz Celeron still based on the PIII/Tualatin core? If so, that would make a lot of difference. A PIII is a lot more powerful than a PIV at the same speed.
Click to expand...

yeah, and it is one of the rare Celerons to have 256 L2 cache, because the PIII version had 512KB cache.

So yeah, it's no surprise my 1.3Ghz seems faster than just about any P4 I've ever used up to about 1.8Ghz.
 
It's not about processor speed, it's about Hard drive speed

Alot of people think bad about the Celeron for Digital recording. I think it's just a misconception. I bet that sales guy just heard it wasn't good, just like everybody else. I bet he never actually sat down in a chair with a Celeron. You should read my other post. It's not about processor speed, it's about Hard drive speed! It's about how fast your hard drive can read and write data! Does anybody remember the Echo Reporter utility by Echo Audio that came with their cards a few years back???? That little utility tested your hard drive, not your processor speed!!!

You can have a 1 gillion Mhz processor and your computer would still be slow if you had a hard drive you picked up at a thrift shop. Processor speed is important for making things on your screen load up faster, opening and closing windows.
 
hard drive speed, bus speed, memory speed...theres alot of factors. and boy celerons suck bad...they suck so bad that i mixed 22 tracks using a sonar with a celeron. never had to mix that many before but it was nice to know my computer could do it. celeron works...it may not be the best...but it works.
 
Although I'm sure that a 2.8 GHz Celeron can do just fine for most audio processing, I have to say that I think $699 is WAY too much to pay for it.
 
ibrc said:
I had a salesman tell me the Celeron type proccesors are horrible for recording and I should not attempt to use it. Does this hold any water?
Click to expand...

Not really. PC recording is about horsepower, which includes the CPU style/speed, the amount of RAM, the hard drive setup, the bus speed, and a few other factors.

All other things being equal, a Celeron system has less processing power than a P4 of the same speed. However the key question is whether the system at hand has the power to handle your recording task.

Recording 1-2 tracks at a time is one thing. Trying to record 8-16 tracks at a time takes more power to work well. A 2.8 GHz 512RAM Celeron system is a pretty good system for most recording tasks.

What are you tring to record with this system? How many tracks?

Ed
 
You can also add a firewire PCI card to most PC systems for usually less than $50.

Ed
 
I tested 10-11 tracks at a time (32 bit Stereo) audio on my 600 MHZ Celeron, on my friends 2.6 Mhz Celeron it recorded the exactly the same. Play back is no problem though (35> track playback). Looks like its the hard drive speed don't you think. His hard drive is an Ultra ATA 100 mine is also an Ultra ATA 100. Processor can only do so much, but in the end, if the hard drive can't write as fast as the tracks you want to record, it will slow the whole system to a halt. P4 or Celeron, it will drag. Think about it, what will the CPU do when his little hard drive friend won't hurry up and write those tracks fast.

Any body with an ATA 100 hard drive and a P4 test how many tracks you can record at one time and post your info here.
 
To me track count doesn't mean much unless there's lots of plugins. Hard disk speed is nice but any 7200 RPM drive with 8 MB cache will work fine for just about anything, as long as you have enough memory to avoid using page files.
Dunno...I'd never buy a P4 Celeron... If people wanna know what the deal is with it, just look up some reviews and do a little research on the L2 cache of a p4 celeron. They simply exist for price conscious people people who shop on clock speed. For less money you can build the same machine with an Athlon XP that will fully smoke any Celeron.
 
Quotes from the article link above:

"Despite all this, chip speed remains central to computer manufacturers' marketing plans. That's because chip speed is the easiest way to catch your attention: Misinformed consumers figure the faster, the better. The reality is, a computer with at least a 500-MHz chip and 256MB of RAM will meet the needs of a majority of users: e-mail, Web browsing and word processing. Keep that in mind the next time some sales kid tries to convince you to upgrade."

"Ten years ago, computers shipped with 16-MHz chips. Today, they operate at 2.4 GHz. The chips' internal clocks are 150 times as fast, but computers are not 150 times as powerful."

"The mania for megahertz measuring started when Intel started beating AMD with its Pentium line of CPUs. Krewell says the chip giant adopted as its mantra Moore's Law--"computer performance doubles every 18 months"--but applied it to chip speed. The company did double its speeds every year and a half or so, but this didn't always lead to a doubling of performance."
 
avatuar9 said:
Quotes from the article link above:

"Despite all this, chip speed remains central to computer manufacturers' marketing plans. That's because chip speed is the easiest way to catch your attention: Misinformed consumers figure the faster, the better. The reality is, a computer with at least a 500-MHz chip and 256MB of RAM will meet the needs of a majority of users: e-mail, Web browsing and word processing. Keep that in mind the next time some sales kid tries to convince you to upgrade."

"Ten years ago, computers shipped with 16-MHz chips. Today, they operate at 2.4 GHz. The chips' internal clocks are 150 times as fast, but computers are not 150 times as powerful."

"The mania for megahertz measuring started when Intel started beating AMD with its Pentium line of CPUs. Krewell says the chip giant adopted as its mantra Moore's Law--"computer performance doubles every 18 months"--but applied it to chip speed. The company did double its speeds every year and a half or so, but this didn't always lead to a doubling of performance."
Click to expand...

Intel just keeps on coming out with chips that are less and less efficient, with more and more stages. Like the Prescotts. A 3.2 Prescott is slower than a 3.2 Canterwood.

Can you imagine how much faster an Athlon would be if you had one that actually ran at 3.2Ghz? It would kick the crap out of a Pentium.

Of course Intel is beginning to wise up, hence the Pentium M chips, which aren't far off architecture-wise from PIII's......which aren't all that different than Athlons.
 
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