CPU for audio work - AMD or Intel?

Read this thread late!

I'd run Intel, it has a better memory bandwidth than the older Athlons. It also clocks very well and doesn't run too hot. Many people report its more stable with the music software too. Personally I HATE computers with music, they're so unreliable. I use hardware in my studio and only sequence in the computer + a little audio.

You will need at least DDR400 with the Intel.

Most PC's are very powerful and if you're not running racks of virtual synths and effects you don't need huge power.

Athlon 64 is not worth the money, it's limited to around 2.4ghz without sub zero cooling. All the architectures are due for a big change at the moment.

Is Mac the way to go? Well if you can afford it and put up with the fact it's slower, it's supposed to be more reliable and therefore is worth it.

If you bought Asus or Abit and some better ram you could have clocked to around 3.2ghz on air. Pity you only bought 3200!

Thanks, Tim

 

I wasn't aware there was anything faster than DDR400 apart from maybe Rambus stuff?

As it turns out the silly people at Ebuyer were out of stock on the motherboard so I have changed it to a Gigabyte Ga-8ik1100 which seems a lot better anyway because it has dual channel DDR so twice the bandwidth, yay!

It's a real pitty there is not any good audio software for Linux because that would solve all the stability problems of PC's! One of my dad's computers running Linux has just clocked 1 year of up time It was only turned off before to fix a broken fan!

I would love to use hardware for everything but as I'm a unemployed college going 17yr old I can't really afford it

BTW AK, what the hell do you need all that power for? 2gig of ram?!

 

DRR500 is now available.... made for clocking. RAMbus is slower after the dual channel FSB800's have a look at Tomshardware for details.

All socket 478 chips (Intel) that use FSB800 are dual channel. Your Gigabyte is a downgrade on the ASUS which is considered to be one of the best motherboards for this platform. Change it back if possible or switch to Abit IC7-G or IC7 - Max3.

You should alter your ram order too expecially if you're getting the Asus, you'll get 200mhz and probably lots and lots more from your setup with a couple of number tweaks in the BIOS.

My current 2.4ghz chip runs at 3.6ghz (sub zero cooled though).

Thanks, Tim

 

As far as I know, the Asus board I had ordered before did not support dual channel DDR, its only the very latest Intel chipset that does. Maybe the CPU is, but not the ram. At least that's what I understood of it, they make a big thing about the dual channel ram on the new Intel I875 chipset.

The Asus board was nearly half the price as well so if that's anything to go by...

Also if I'm not mistaken there are only a few boards that support DDR500 (PC4400?) and the memory is more than twice the price of DDR400. I'm not that keen to get the very best performance!

Thanks peepz!

P.S. PumaMan, I belive the Intel made boards do not allow overclocking.

 

Sorry I checked the Mboard and yes the ASUS is not the one I'm talking about.. that particular model is pretty poor (err.. very!)

True:
Intel boards do not allow overclocking...


"few boards that support DDR500"
Yes there are a few that will get the FSB to 250 (at 1:1 ratio) the Abit is mentioned one of them. P4C800-E Deluxe is the Asus board that I was mixing up with this one, this will also do it.

I hope your memory is Cas 2!

Cheers, Tim

 

Chaps,

Am I missing something here?
I got the impression that this was a PC for audio use. Does the use of compression/uncompression routines really need a 2Ghz+ processor? Frankly I find that a little to believe.

I'd be surprised if you needed anything above a base level PC, so talk of DDR bandwidth seems a little superfluous.

 

Yep you're missing something.....

Real time virtual effects actually affect the sound in the way an external effects unit would. Some of these, like decent reverb require complex maths, get loads of these and you use up serious amounts of ram and processor.

Not mentioning virtual synths!

Pro-tools was (at least is now in part) a computer in it's own right, the computers of the day weren't fast enough to do the audio effects so they used external DSP (boxes). Now you can do it all in the computer the extenal processing side is not as important (not discussing quality here) but the computer is!



Cheers, Tim

 

the benefit pci express will bring is increased bandwidth - roughly 8 times that of pci today. which means better throughput for the soundcard.
it ain't just about graphics !
which is strange as nvidia etc are getting excited about pci express graphics cards - agp will be completely redundant - but i havent seen anything from pro sound card manuf's getting excited. maybe i havent been looking in the right places ....

 

Propably because no-one is approaching the limit of the bandwidths at the moment, the graphics cards will be the first to get there. Takes audio an age! to catch up. Standard gaming soundcards don't require much.

Also bear in mind that (you may know this), the bandwidth for PCI has been fine for many many years, it took ages before they contemplated a change. So PCI express may show no improvments at all.

The biggest change (in about 2 years I think), will be 64 bit processing. Anyone crazy enough to think this is worth having at the moment is wasting their money.

The only way I found to future proof my stuff is to go with supercooled PC's, my PC is over a year old and still faster than any chip available.

Tim

 

You are quite correct. In my opinion overclocking is a waste of time if you want stability for your work. The last thing you want is a major crash in the middle of something intense. If its for fun then try overclocking, if its to bring in the bacon then stability rules. If you want more power after a few months just buy a new CPU, less hassle. As I said this stuff doesnt cost a fortune anymore. Spend your money on plenty of ram, a fast HD, a pro soundcard and a good DVD burner.

Remember usually overclocked PCs are usually noisy due to the amount of cooling required (extra expense that causes more electrical noise in the PC)

If you were working in video conversion/compression then go for all the power you can muster.

 

..Unless you run Linux :JOEL:

In my experience overclockng if fine as long as you do it carefully and test it to the extremes. Noise is a problem though, this new Gigabyte board looks like it has a fan on it so thats annoying!

Check out this for noiseless overclocking http://www.quietpc.com/uk/tnn500a.php

 

Photoshop (now using CS version) the more you give it the better, I used to be a printer and as a wee side line I do commercial graphics, When I have a work in progress I like to keep file sizes big (250mb+) when rastering or applying filters and such, more ram means less scratch file usage and is therfore faster. Also for commercial graphics you can be using 3 progs at once and cutting and pasting between each Ie, Photoshop, illustrator and indesign, or quark.

 

Ahh I thought it must be graphics! I used to do quite a bit of anime stuff in Photoshop and illustrator. I don't now because.. well I'm not sure, I suppose I proved to myself I can do it so I don't care anymore lol!

You can have a look at some of my pics if you like.. http://www.geocities.com/fuzzey_door/

Any chance of seeing a few paintings?

 

Wow nice pics, I'm not really artistic at all, mine tends to be promotional stuff flyers and the like, some of my mates run businesses one has a gym one has a haulage firm and the other runs a martial arts academy so most of it is that kind of stuff, may look out some of my favs but would need to do a bit of work on them as most are over 100mb and P/Bucket only lets you post 250k. but heres a couple

http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v250/analogkid/flattenedfull_colour_flyer_copysmall.jpg

http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v250/analogkid/BBCert04flattenedsmall.jpg

One is an a3 certificate, the other an a5 flyer both files went to printers and printed off in 4 colour process.

 

" In my opinion overclocking is a waste of time if you want stability for your work."


Err maybe but I've got a 1.8ghz athlon here at 2.2ghz that has not crashed once in over a year and a half so this statement is a little iffy.... I'd say that if you run your PC to the max of it's overclock then that is true.

My Vapochill is also VERY quiet as it has only one fan running slowly. so the noise issue is also incorrect....

It's all in the implementation...

Usually people don't do enough research and buy the wrong stuff. By the way I've just set up a computer company! No plug for a product yet (I don't have any!)

Cheers, Tim

 

Agree tim but vapochill aint cheap.

 

The Athlon is on air....

The Vapochill isn't cheap well until you consider I saved over £250 on the chip and got it to run faster than any Intel currently available....

Yes it is vastly complex though (took lots of effort).

The AMD on the other hand was relatively simple and get's very close to the 3D benchmark of a 3200+

 

Is the athlon not noisy my xp2000 is running at stock speed on air(have overclocked it but can't be bothered as never noticed much difference), and its noisy to run at around 50c, sure benchmarks will show difference but hardly worth it in real world IMO.

Would love one of the vapochill rigs but £500+ and but ugly has kept my lust at bay so far.

 

I still feel that if you are doing important applications stability is crucial. Yes hot-rodded systems can be made to run smoothly (i've had them myself) but a lot dont because a lot dont know what they are doing.

If I build PC's for friends businesses I keep them as stock and default in terms of tweaking as I can as they just want them to run and run with out BSOD'ing all the while.

If someone wanted a hotrod then I'd build them a hotrod but only as long as they knew how to look after it.

Years ago if you could tweak an extra 10mhz out of a cpu that meant another 3fps in Quake that was great. But is it really important to jump from 189fps to 192fps in Unreal Tournament? I'm just saying that for 95% of PC users overclocking just isnt important now, especially as you can buy a new far more powerful CPU for £50 rather then the £200 you had to spend 6 years ago. I'd rather dual CPU as an experiment than serious overclocking. However, I can see the appeal to the hardcore users, as we can no longer tinker with modern cars like our dads did we can at least modify our PC's. Thats how I see overclocking, you do it purely because you can rather than you really need to.

I just get a bit worried at the sick puppy brigade that build monster overclocked refrigerated PC's (not refering to you Tim) that only run benchmarks over and over rather than do anything else with it. Bit like the guys who spend thousands on their hifi and then only play Norah Jones on it.

 

Just an update.

I got all the bits and it is running nicely, although I think windows might need a fresh install some things seem a little 'sticky'.

It does what I wanted and that's the important thing! My most complex mix which would not even open half the time without making my 2Ghz machine fall on its face now runs with less than half the CPU used.

We are starting recording the new album the week after next and it is going to use even more channels and effects than the last one so its going to really put it to the test. This is the reason I decided the time to upgrade was nigh.

The 2.8Ghz Prescott is running nicely at 3.4Ghz with a small voltage increase. I haven't done a full 24hour burn in test yet, but it ran for 15min at full out power encoding The Matrix 3 to divX.

The only downside is that I have to run the CPU fan at a higher speed and is therefore more noisy. The motherboards fan is noisy al well but it doesn't seem at all hot so I bet it will run with no fan at all.