I have just been looking at cost of upgrading my CPU. I am currently running an AMD 64 3000+ and am looking at upgrading to a dual core.

Q. Are Intel better and faster, as the Pentium 4D 930 Dual Core has 2 x 3.0Ghz CPUS with 2Mb cache on each. And with AMD, the Dual core 3800 with 2 x 2.0Ghz and 512Kb cache is £10 dearer!

I am confused.

What do you guys reckon. The Intel is £190 inc VAT and the AMD is £209 inc VAT.

I'm kinda drawn towards the Intel.

PC

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Trance is our religion and Armin is our god!

i would go for the AMD X2 4400+ or the 4800+ (as those have a bigger cache than the others)

and as far as performance. the amd seems to perform better at the moment. (have a look at some DAW benchmarks...)

go for an Opteron 165 or Opteron 170, cheaper and more L2 than the 3800+

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quote:

Originally posted by davedresden i suggest getting the gabriel & dresden prog-a-minute. in 3 easy steps you too could change the face of dance music. batteries not included. - dave

AMD any days and three times on Sunday over Intel at the moment.
AMD simply beats the snot out of Intel in floating point performance and memory access. Gues what Audio apps do a lot of? ;-)

If you go AMD you should be able to upgrade the CPU to one of the dual cores without having to replace your motherboard, ram and everything else. If you were to go intel you'd need a new motherboard at the least.

For ultimate speed though Dual, dual core opterons seams the way to go right now. You can pick up a pair of 270s for about $370 each, and the motherboard to drive them is about $250. There are some RAm considerations, but you can start with one CPU and add the second one a bit later. In terms of shear CPU there is nothing else that comes even remotely close to this kind of setup at the moment.

I have just been looking at these Opteron CPU's. And its well confusing, there are so many different model numbers, and I wanted to know if any of you IT bods could give me an idea as to what 1 way, 2 way and up to 8 way means with reference to the Opteron CPU. Do I need two way or can I just suffice with 1 way? I definitely want dual core Opteron , but theres so many of the buggers! Its also great that you can buy one and buy the other later to double the speed!

I have also found a Board at quite a reasonable price. It supports up to 6GB of DDR400 RAM which is great, Its the Asus K8N-DL, but its got PCI-Express rather than AGP for the video. I seem to remember there being a big problem with this architecture and DAW's.

Any help or guidance, will be most gratefully received.


Also I'll have to buy a new case cos tis in EATX format, so that increases the budget by a little, but IMO the performance is gonna be worth it!


PC

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Trance is our religion and Armin is our god!

I'm in the market for a new desktop as well and was wondering if the parts I've picked so far are adequate. My budget is 1500 US dollars with updrages for sound cards and additional hard drives coming later this summer, that 1500 includes the price for monitor and keyboard, since my previous computer was a laptop I have no parts that I can recycle from previous systems. This thing also has to double as the game rig unfortunately, I canot afford to get a separete box for music stuff.


here is my part list:
LITE-ON 16X DVD±R DVD Burner - $47

Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450Watt SmartPower - $92

SONY 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive - $8

Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s - $90

ViewSonic VA902b Black 19" 8ms LCD Monitor - $260

MSI K8N SLI-F Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - $100

eVGA 256-P2-N563-AX Geforce 7900GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - $320

CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) - $140

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 1GHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor - $355

I'm ordering all this stuff off newegg so it will be cheaper. I am wondering if I can get a better system for my money by choosing different parts. Basicly the most intense things I am trying to do with this machine are playing oblivion and makng music. I'm looking at an maudio delta 66 for my sound card and an additional hard drive in the future. I can't really pay more than 1500 for all of this stuff so the high end processors are a bit out of my reach. Software wise I am going to do audio with linux programs which will reside on a second har drive which wont be using the nvidia drivers. Does anybody who keeps up with the pc parts market know of how I can get a better system within my budget than the one I have here? I am concerned that my power supply might not be enough, my gfx card might be noisy and troublesome, the motherboard might suck, and the processor might be weak, so can smebody rate my pieces and suggest some better ones withing my budget?

DO NOT BUY AN AUDIO PC WIthout reading thiS..


http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat....&fpart=1#360675

The last 5 pages of the thread and the first are usually enough to be current. Wish I'd read it the first two times I build a comp for audio.

There is a side project looking at dual, dual core opteron systems. If you go with the Opteron 265s you can get some stunning performance for about $1500 all in. WIll totally crush the machine you described, though if you're running fruity prolly not. If you have apps that are fully multi-processor aware then it will scream. think Cubase, Nuendo, Pro Tools LE 7, Cakewalk..

hmmm, opteron 265's seem interesting, the tough part is going to be the compromise between music and playing oblivion. I was really wanting that geforce 7800gt, now I am wondering if it can even coexist with this "allenstein machine". It is definately going to be a couple months before I actually get this thing, I have to secure a little more fundng.

Do you want your PC for gaming or audio. It can only really be optimized for one or the other..

My studio PC is running a very old Matrox dual head card, simply because it consumes very little resources.

Alright Diginerd.

I have a question regarding the spec of the main system at the top of that page. They are recommending a PCI-Express vidoe card and board. I thought there were problems with DAW's and this type of architecture. Is that no longer the case?

PC

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Trance is our religion and Armin is our god!

Also you mentioned that this would not make a difference with Fruity. I am a fruity user and am currently having probs with CPU load. If I go to the trouble to upgrade all this, surely its gonna make quite a difference to the amount of FX and VSTi's I can use in a track.

PC

Currently running an AMD 64 3000+, with 1.5Gb of DDR 400 RAM, a Radeon 9550 128MB DDR Video Card, and a Delta Audiophile 2496 Sound Card.

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Trance is our religion and Armin is our god!

if you want to build a serious audio pc wait till intel to release the new conroe and memrom chips later this year, they will destroy anything amd has to or will have to offer over the next year at less than half the cost.

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"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes"