Music PC
 

Hello,

my PC needs an upgrade, and since my harddisk died yesterday, this is
the moment. At the moment i've got a Celeron 500, which i build my
self years ago, and it worked great. Now i want to build a AMD athlon
XP based system. I'm a student, so the amd 64 is too expensive for
me....

I can get a cheap amd athlon xp 2600+ (333 fsb) processor, and i have
read good reviews about it....but my problem is which motherboard to
choose. I was thinking of a Asus a7n8x (deluxe)...with the nForce2
chipset.

Now i got some questions:

- Does anyone have suggestions or alternatives? I use mu PC for normal
work, but especially for recording my own music (!) Are the VIA
chipsets worse?

- Is it worth it to buy dual channel memory, or is it almost senseless
with an amd system (keep in mind that i use it for a lot of recording
and playing (realtim) so called softsynths. That means that i need a
very low latency time etc.) Or do you prefer to buy one single
memory-chip.. instead of two and use it as dual channel?

- Same question for serial ata. I read most of the time people don't
notice the difference. But does it have benefits with recording music
an stuff?? If not i can safe a few bucks....


thanks for all your reactions..

David

On 29 Oct 2004 02:35:43 -0700,
(DEf) wrote:

Hello,

my PC needs an upgrade, and since my harddisk died yesterday, this is
the moment. At the moment i've got a Celeron 500, which i build my
self years ago, and it worked great. Now i want to build a AMD athlon
XP based system. I'm a student, so the amd 64 is too expensive for
me....

I can get a cheap amd athlon xp 2600+ (333 fsb) processor, and i have
read good reviews about it....but my problem is which motherboard to
choose. I was thinking of a Asus a7n8x (deluxe)...with the nForce2
chipset.

Now i got some questions:

- Does anyone have suggestions or alternatives? I use mu PC for normal
work, but especially for recording my own music (!) Are the VIA
chipsets worse?

They are a few percent slower and don't lock the PC/AGP bus,
a detriment to overclocking. In everyday use the difference
isn't noticable.


- Is it worth it to buy dual channel memory, or is it almost senseless
with an amd system (keep in mind that i use it for a lot of recording
and playing (realtim) so called softsynths. That means that i need a
very low latency time etc.) Or do you prefer to buy one single
memory-chip.. instead of two and use it as dual channel?

Dual channel on Athlon XP is best for powering integrated
video. You may be better off buying a single module in the
capacity you need, if that's only 512MB. For 1GB the price
of modules is disproportionately higher so 2 modules makes
more sense.


- Same question for serial ata. I read most of the time people don't
notice the difference. But does it have benefits with recording music
an stuff?? If not i can safe a few bucks....

No benefit for that use BUT if you ever wanted to add more
than 4 drives total or support future drives the SATA may
come in handy... but then you could also buy a PCI card to
add those functions.


You may find nForce2 (or any integrated audio for that
matter) to have noisey analog I/O, if that is important then
you may need budget for a sound card too.

On 29 Oct 2004 02:35:43 -0700, (DEf) wrote:

- Same question for serial ata. I read most of the time people don't
notice the difference. But does it have benefits with recording music
an stuff?? If not i can safe a few bucks....

I dont think so.

Though getting something like the Raptor may or maynot be better since
it is one of the faster HDs you can get. Its puny though for the price
and music can take up lots of space.

They have the mobile Barton 2500 and ASUS nforce2 board for 140 I
think at Newegg but then youd have to buy the heatsink fan too.

I think its a around the same price or tiny bit cheaper at Mwave but
it comes with their own fan/htsink (mwaves).

Theres a cheaper board by Chaintech for around $50, with that combo
and the 2500 barton and their fan its 135 or so. But I did see a few
posts about some problems with the board a few months ago. If you
check the consumer feedback at newegg its very good now though.
However -- I dont see as many posts about at NforcersHQ forum - a
website where they talk about nforce boards and other stuff. I see
lots more stuff on the ASUS since its more popular which may be
valuable if you have problems. Id probably buy the chaintech if I was
puttign together a system for someone who wanted to save money but in
your case doing music --- itll probably be OK but I of course you
never know if there will be any issues with a music card or whatever
and the ASUS is a more popular board.


You can get the barton 2500 and easily just set your FSB to 200 and
the barton becomes a 3200 , everyone seems to be doing it. Im doing it
on my PC. I saw a blurb that said Outpost was selling Kingston mem
DDR 400/3200 for $56 /512 megs probably after rebate. Thats what Im
using with no problems on an ASUS deluxe board.

DEf:

- Does anyone have suggestions or alternatives?

Some good recommendations he
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/...09-21-2004.ars

--
Mac Cool

Ok thanks for your replies...now i've got still 2 questions about the
memory:


- Can you notice the difference between cl2.5 en cl2 memory ?

- Since i've bought a athlon xp 2600 on 333 fsb, do i have to buy
pc2700 memory? 'Cause pc3200 memory costs the same? But i've heard
that the performance only decreases when you run pc3200 on a 333
fsb....is that correct? What do you advice ?


Thanks again..
David







Theres a cheaper board by Chaintech for around $50, with that combo
and the 2500 barton and their fan its 135 or so. But I did see a few
posts about some problems with the board a few months ago. If you
check the consumer feedback at newegg its very good now though.
However -- I dont see as many posts about at NforcersHQ forum - a
website where they talk about nforce boards and other stuff. I see
lots more stuff on the ASUS since its more popular which may be
valuable if you have problems. Id probably buy the chaintech if I was
puttign together a system for someone who wanted to save money but in
your case doing music --- itll probably be OK but I of course you
never know if there will be any issues with a music card or whatever
and the ASUS is a more popular board.


You can get the barton 2500 and easily just set your FSB to 200 and
the barton becomes a 3200 , everyone seems to be doing it. Im doing it
on my PC. I saw a blurb that said Outpost was selling Kingston mem
DDR 400/3200 for $56 /512 megs probably after rebate. Thats what Im
using with no problems on an ASUS deluxe board.

On 2 Nov 2004 08:15:14 -0800, (DEf) wrote:

Ok thanks for your replies...now i've got still 2 questions about the
memory:


- Can you notice the difference between cl2.5 en cl2 memory ?

- Since i've bought a athlon xp 2600 on 333 fsb, do i have to buy
pc2700 memory? 'Cause pc3200 memory costs the same? But i've heard
that the performance only decreases when you run pc3200 on a 333
fsb....is that correct? What do you advice ?


Thanks again..
David

As the other posters have said go with 3200. First of all even if you
didnt use it at 3200/400 in the future you can possibly carry it over
to an AMD 64 system and still use it. Second -- you can probably
overclock the 2600 easily by just setting it to 200 FSB (3200/400
level) and get a 3200 MD XP processor just like that.

Also the the Audiophile 2496 recording card was going for lower and
lower prices the last time I looked. Real cheap. Its one of the most
popular entry level decent recording cards along with the Echoaudio
MIA etc but I think that one hasnt fallen as much in pricing. They
might be planning a new Audiophile 2496 replacement so that might be
the reason. Id search for some buzz about it just in case theres some
super duper feature on the new one if it is coming out that may be
worth waiting for.