motherboard/cpu combo for sound

motherboard/cpu combo for sound

[Laura Conrad]

I'm going to be upgrading my machine soon.  I wondered if there's
anyone here who follows the hardware market better than I do, and has
an opinion about what's a good buy at the moment.

I'd also be interested in what people would get if price were no
object, although that isn't exactly the case with me.  And in
predictions about how much better a machine I can get for less in 6
months.

One of the applications that seems to want more horsepower than I
currently have is hard disk recording.  Timidity (which I use
frequently) also seems to sometimes want more than it can get from my
current machine.

I've heard people say (not in the context of sound applications) that
the Celeron processors are pretty cost-effective these days.  

-- 
Laura (mailto:lconrad@world.std.com , http://www.world.std.com/~lconrad/ )
(617) 661-8097	fax: (801) 365-6574 
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139

Re: motherboard/cpu combo for sound

[Paco]

On 23 Feb 2000, Laura Conrad wrote:

> 
> I'm going to be upgrading my machine soon.  I wondered if there's
> anyone here who follows the hardware market better than I do, and has
> an opinion about what's a good buy at the moment.
> 
> I'd also be interested in what people would get if price were no
> object, although that isn't exactly the case with me.  And in
> predictions about how much better a machine I can get for less in 6
> months.

Well... if price is not an object then I'd load up with a nice fat 1GHz
Athlon.  (You'll need to wait about a month or so to get one.)  As far as
waiting goes, you'll be able to pick up a 800MHz Athlon in about a month
for less than I paid for my 550MHz one month ago.

But... if price *is* an object, and you're looking for bang-for-the-buck,
I'd suggest a celeron (although I despise Intel) or an AMD K6-II or
K6-III.  I previously used a K6-II-350 and it worked GREAT for hard disk
recording.  Midi?  I don;t know anything about that.  I never use it.

regards,
-Paco

Re: motherboard/cpu combo for sound

[Peter Leif Rasmussen]

If price wasn't a problem for sure I would go with an SMP system, and with
the AbitBP6(?) motherboard you can even get an economic dual Celeron system.
Linux 2.4 will have a vastly improved SMP functionality and stability and
without knowing particular details I would expect multiple CPUs to handle
time critical pieces better than one CPU that must deal with everything, eg.
sound recording.

Otherwise I agree that an Athlon system now is the way to go, and I would
rather go with that than a single CPU Celeron. In any case, when you have
set your budget and found out how much you want to spend on the mobo+CPU
subsystem, if comparing Celeron and Athlon, the Athlon is faster for the
same CPU-speed and I don't know of any issues with regard to sound (the
Athlon has/had some issues with some video-cards as far as I remember).

In any case, anything but Celeron and Athlon should be avoided due to both
pure performance and price/performance issues.

Peter

Paco wrote:
> 
> On 23 Feb 2000, Laura Conrad wrote:
> 
> >
> > I'm going to be upgrading my machine soon.  I wondered if there's
> > anyone here who follows the hardware market better than I do, and has
> > an opinion about what's a good buy at the moment.
> >
> > I'd also be interested in what people would get if price were no
> > object, although that isn't exactly the case with me.  And in
> > predictions about how much better a machine I can get for less in 6
> > months.
> 
> Well... if price is not an object then I'd load up with a nice fat 1GHz
> Athlon.  (You'll need to wait about a month or so to get one.)  As far as
> waiting goes, you'll be able to pick up a 800MHz Athlon in about a month
> for less than I paid for my 550MHz one month ago.
> 
> But... if price *is* an object, and you're looking for bang-for-the-buck,
> I'd suggest a celeron (although I despise Intel) or an AMD K6-II or
> K6-III.  I previously used a K6-II-350 and it worked GREAT for hard disk
> recording.  Midi?  I don;t know anything about that.  I never use it.
> 
> regards,
> -Paco

Re: motherboard/cpu combo for sound

[Brian Alexander Todd]

I should note that I have a BP6 and while it is great while
its working (for days on end) its bios is known to be flakey
and can cause problems for some people (who feel that stability
is on the month time scale).  I don't want to go on and on 
since this is a sound mailer but check www.bp6.com before you
buy a bp6.  There's a mailing list too.


At 03:09 PM 2/23/00 -0500, Peter Leif Rasmussen wrote:
>If price wasn't a problem for sure I would go with an SMP system, and with
>the AbitBP6(?) motherboard you can even get an economic dual Celeron system.
>Linux 2.4 will have a vastly improved SMP functionality and stability and
>without knowing particular details I would expect multiple CPUs to handle
>time critical pieces better than one CPU that must deal with everything, eg.
>sound recording.
>
>Otherwise I agree that an Athlon system now is the way to go, and I would
>rather go with that than a single CPU Celeron. In any case, when you have
>set your budget and found out how much you want to spend on the mobo+CPU
>subsystem, if comparing Celeron and Athlon, the Athlon is faster for the
>same CPU-speed and I don't know of any issues with regard to sound (the
>Athlon has/had some issues with some video-cards as far as I remember).
>
>In any case, anything but Celeron and Athlon should be avoided due to both
>pure performance and price/performance issues.
>
>Peter
>
>Paco wrote:
>> 
>> On 23 Feb 2000, Laura Conrad wrote:
>> 
>> >
>> > I'm going to be upgrading my machine soon.  I wondered if there's
>> > anyone here who follows the hardware market better than I do, and has
>> > an opinion about what's a good buy at the moment.
>> >
>> > I'd also be interested in what people would get if price were no
>> > object, although that isn't exactly the case with me.  And in
>> > predictions about how much better a machine I can get for less in 6
>> > months.
>> 
>> Well... if price is not an object then I'd load up with a nice fat 1GHz
>> Athlon.  (You'll need to wait about a month or so to get one.)  As far as
>> waiting goes, you'll be able to pick up a 800MHz Athlon in about a month
>> for less than I paid for my 550MHz one month ago.
>> 
>> But... if price *is* an object, and you're looking for bang-for-the-buck,
>> I'd suggest a celeron (although I despise Intel) or an AMD K6-II or
>> K6-III.  I previously used a K6-II-350 and it worked GREAT for hard disk
>> recording.  Midi?  I don;t know anything about that.  I never use it.
>> 
>> regards,
>> -Paco
>
>
>
Brian Todd
email:   bat5@po.cwru.edu
home:    (216) 791-2407
office:  (216) 368-4209
fax:     (216) 368-4969

Re: motherboard/cpu combo for sound

[Laura Conrad]

    Paco> On 23 Feb 2000, Laura Conrad wrote:
    >> 
    >> I'm going to be upgrading my machine soon.  I wondered if there's
    >> anyone here who follows the hardware market better than I do, and has
    >> an opinion about what's a good buy at the moment.

Many thanks to everyone who responded to this.  The new machine is up
and running (mostly).  I got an Athlon 750 with 128M of memory, and an 
SBLive soundcard.  

I haven't yet tried to make it do anything that the old soundcard
couldn't, but the Mandrake 7.0 install worked fine for everything the old 
soundcard does.  (I've given up on configuring MIDI, and just use
Timidity instead.)

-- 
Laura (mailto:lconrad@world.std.com , http://www.world.std.com/~lconrad/ )
(617) 661-8097	fax: (801) 365-6574 
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139