Gigabyte DS3 or DS3R?

cemhot · Post by **cemhot** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:59 pm

Hi folks!
The humble creamware user is back in.
Unfortunately i didnt buy me some sweets for my Luna.
But finally i got a (bad payed) job and hope i can make it to a transient designer soon.

But for now i have to buy myself some pc goodies.
My boss gives me 200 euro which i have to spend for computer hardware.

I checked the latest infos of some creamware gurus here and then i think
i will go for a Core 2 Duo E6750 for 165 Euro.
I think the E6850 isnt worth the 80 Euros more to spend.

Also i went away from the idea of overclocking a cheap one like a E4500.
Maybe if someone tells me that i could exclude the pci slot where the Luna would be in...

Ehm, well now the real question.

Gigabyte DS3 or DS3R:

I read something which confuses me totally before hitting the order button.

Something like the SATA of the DS3 only emulate an IDE or something like that?
You might like to check this post at KVR:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=207068

Stay away from the DS3 unless you want to run your fancy SATA 3Gb/s drives as IDE emulation,
for some really $%#^%$ing irritating reason the ICH9 (minus the R) Southbridge
doesnt support AHCI mode so you're forced to
run with IDE emulation. Of course, they don't tell you this
and you have to figure it out when you put it all together
and can't figure out why you're getting bluescreens
when you try to install your OS.

Another question which goes into a similar direction:
Really a bad idea to use the ide (mix SATA and ide)?
So i would have to buy some SATA additionally plus some SATA DVD?
That would really be shh*tt!
I came along with the idea of external USB case for the DVD/CD-drives, but i find them really expensive, about 50-70 Euro.
That way i could easily buy a SATA DVD!

Thank you very much in advance!

Post by **garyb** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:40 pm

what the hell is wrong with using the sata drives as ide? 60 tracks not enough?

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 7:37 pm

Hello there...

I own a Gigabyte DS3R and am very happy with it. It is rock solid so far. It is true what you say about the SATA IDE matter, but it all depends on what you want to do exactly with your system. I have put it to very heavy load without any problems.

Perhaps, what KVR guys are telling is for a mayor exigence to the system, but hey, I can load SO MANY heavy VST and run quite a few audio tracks with FX and all, and nothing heppens... it just is perfect, not a single click either.

If you configure it correctly and all your parts are "compatible", there is no problems ahead.

The 6750 is a great choice for a GREAT price! Go for it. I own this one too, and it is fantastic, it works very well with this motherboard.

Cheers

Post by **garyb** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:13 pm

sorry, din't mean to appear hostile......

cemhot · Post by **cemhot** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 12:46 am

Thank you guys for your comments.

@garyb:

No, i didnt take it hostile, maximum "garip"

http://www.turkishdictionary.net/?word= ... mit=Search

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garip

@Nestor
Well i wanted to see if i can go for the non"R" then, cause it would save me some 20 Euro. Well its not that much, but then its half the money of a DVD-drive or i could invest it in a cooling or hd.

Thank you very much for your help!

Post by **garyb** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:34 am

respect.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 6:09 am

When it comes to MOBO, sorry, but there is no space for saving money. Not there! Your MOBO is your guaranty that the system is going to work. You can save in anything else, processor, HDD, video, anything, but never save money in a MOBO, you must buy what you need exactly.

Fede · Post by **Fede** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:44 pm

AHCI or RAID are the way to use all advanced features of the sata protocol, otherwise you'll be using a simple serial *ide*, because this is what sata basically is: a faster more reliable ide. True parallel ide instead (the old ide) is not supported by the ich9.
Without AHCI or RAID you'll miss NCQ and hot plug. Note that, for these features to work, they should be supported both by the controller and by the disk and this is not always the case, in fact most Western Digital disks miss implementation of NCQ although being compatible with SATA 3Gb/s transfer rate (that mis-called sata-II).

In a future perspective, imo it's better to have more options and versatility (just in case...), as Nestor said, I too would not save money in the motherboard.
Mixing sata with pata isn't any bad, never heard of problems. For external storage look at e-sata (best) or firewire instead of usb.

For the processor, you should consider the new Core E8xxx series, they're newer and look very promising (45 nm, 6MB cache...)

cheers
Fede

cemhot · Post by **cemhot** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:07 pm

Thank you very much for the additional informations.
One hour ago i was quite happy, cause although
my money didnt come, a friend could lend me some money.
Guess what i bought:

Gigabyte DS3R (99 Euro) and
Intel 6750 for 159 Euro.

I came home and recognized my stupidness:

I didnt realise that i cant plug my agp card!

Ok, thats really so stupid, i shouldnt mention it...

And then:

I open the web, launch a computerstore and see:

Price of 8200 fall down! Aaaargh!

I mean i wouldnt have been angry if this happens two weeks later,
but today i was in the shop and didnt even ask again for the prices
of the other CPUs.

Well, anyway. Should have looked yesterday and see what you wrote, Fede.
But there are some other things to do sometimes.

Anyway, i could need another help from you. About the grafiks card:
Last time when i settled to Ati i wasnt lucky, there were some issues.
People said that the drivers werent cool.
Some progs (games and some vsts) didnt run.

Now as i have a week power supply,
Antec Performance True 480P (480 watts max.)
and as im not interested in playing new games,
id like to know which grafics chip would be ok.
Beeing cheap, less performance,
compatibility and less power usage.
Could you maybe help me along again?
So i could see the store on saturday and build up
the new machine this holiday.

Im really happy about the help i got from you,
very nice information here really!
Have nice holidays all together, if you have in your country!

Fede · Post by **Fede** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:55 pm

hurrying things often doesn't pay, especially in the pc biz...

anyway, don't worry, the processor you got is a very good one, and before yesterday it was the best solution ...and the world doesn't change exactly in a day

(or if you prefer you may still try to ask for a change..., I suppose you couldn't even turn on the new pc without a graphic card...)
Keep in mind another thing: in a daw the processor is probably the last thing to care about, in fact (especially if you own a dsp card) it is better to look at mobo&chipset, memory, conflicts/compatibility, psu, case ventilation/noise.. IMO processing power of current pc systems is more than enough for common audio tasks since the arrival of Pentium4 Northwood/FSB800 some years ago.

Anyway, about graphics:

If you don't play latest games as you said, you don't need anything special, I'd look to something in the mid-range market if you can afford it (just a bit future-proof..) maybe passively-cooled (silence!!!).

Ati vs Nvidia:
It is a matter of personal taste (religion?), I personally always preferred ati, because old nvidia cards showed often broken drivers and stability problems and, too bad for *me*, bad converters => ugly colours, but now things have changed a bit (example: digital panels = no matter the converters on the card).
Nvidia currently leads the market of sales and FPS, it is said to have a better Linux driver - I believe this is still true although ati is getting more and more serious on this releasing updated drivers every month - , while ati probably is more advanced on the features side (hw codec support & similar). However the market changes from month to month in favour of one or the other (ati is rumoured to re-gain the performance crown with the upcoming model in May/June...)
As for *my* experience I've never had any problem with ati drivers or stability issues on windows and this is the main *personal* reason I stay with ati.
In this forum there are often threads about vga cards and people sharing their experiences providing helpful information. Tom's Hardware has a nice vga chart for performance benchmarks and often offers interesting comparisons between models in all the price ranges (see http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03/05/ ... _graphics/)

said that, *now* for the minimum future-proof I think you should look at:
- 256MB graphic memory minimum
- possibly PCIe 2.0 interface compliant (yes, it is compatible with PCIe 1.0 mobos)
- possibly 256bit memory bus

other things:
- look at In/Out options!!!! many cards are supporting a variety of new formats (DisplayPort, HDMI) besides DVI and old analog, what is your monitor like?
- it is better if it doesn't get too hot (<70°C)
- it is better if it doesn't produce too much noise (see dB measurements comparisons, <40dB should be very good, passively cooled = 0dB is best)

talking about ati (dunno current nvidia models), the HD3850/3870 looks very interesting, they're also said to be very silent and low temperature.

Good luck with your pc construction, have nice holidays too!
Fede

cemhot · Post by **cemhot** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:28 pm

Thank you very much, Fede!

I calmed down again, when i realised that the 8200 wasnt available

For grafiks i went for ASUS EAH3450.
It wasnt available that days also, i think i will get it on thursday.
Still didnt put all the parts together, cause it takes a lot to organize all
the data in a sensible way.
Your help is very appreciated here, so let me say again:
A very nice and warm community and i would really involve more in all the creamware stuff if i had more dsp (more money

)
But lets see what time will bring with the split of the company.
I would just love to play a prophet or a moog.

greets