PC advice for a Mac-head

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 12:29 pm

This is for the PC gurus. Here's the scenario: i've done some thread searches and haven't really found the definitive answer to this.

i'm looking to get a PC soon. Problem, i'm a complete Mac-head and have absolutely no bloody idea what PC to buy. Initially the PC is going to be used to run things like Dreamweaver and maybe some video editing package. However, i want to make the PC future proof in terms of possibly moving my three SCOPE cards from my Mac to the PC.

What i need to know then is what motherboard to get (apparently this seems important in PCs), chipset (i keep seeing VIA is one to avoid, dunno what that means), processor (AMD still need avoiding?) and anything else hardware-wise to consider.

i also need advice on stuff like ACPI mode (what the f**k is that?), hyperthreading (on or off? Still dunno what it is), sharing IRQs (no, don't understand that either), anything regarding PC tweaks explained in plain English. Seriously this PC stuff is so complicated (now i remember why i got a Mac!).

No doubt someone will point me to various threads with all these answers on, but i just want to try and get them in one condensed thread (which may also be helpful to other PC/SCOPE newbs).

Also, if anyone knows the best place to get a PC in the UK that would help. i'm guessing PC World and Tiny are out

i'm not sure about building my own PC, will a stock one be OK? i also don't want to get one built by someone like Red Submarine as they end up being as expensive as Macs.

Bloody hell, i know that's a lot and there'll probably be a thousand conflicting views but hopefully a pattern will emerge which might be nice to condense into a FAQ database.

Regards,
Mr Arkadin

[ This Message was edited by: Mr Arkadin on 2004-06-13 10:31 ]

maakbow · Post by **maakbow** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 4:52 pm

Hi Mac Head
I'm a PC guy who works in an office full of Mac-head architechs. I'm a PC designer [web] so that makes me a total weirdo.
First a little background.
The thing you must understand about the selection of PC components [which must seem very technical at least], is that though there are curently 3 models of apple G5 avaialable [here in NZ], when you include all the local computer assemblers, there are literally an unlimited amount of hardware combinations of varying price/quality. So its very easy for both hardware manufacturers and users to learn what works in a Mac and what doesn't, but it is impossible for a manufacturer to know if there hardware will work in an unknown PC configeration.
Therefore you have to trust people here or in similar places. Configuring a PC for graphics is much simpler so i will concentrate on the audio side.

I have run a succsesful audio computer on an amd and intel platform and currently use a via chipset MSI serverboard succesfully.
I would however avoid this and will never choose via again in the near future [or MSI].
The thing is avoiding "potential" problems.
If i was building again I would undoubtedly use an intel chiped motherboard and intell CPU. I have built and used our companies last 3 work [graphics] computers succesfully with my audio setup.
Luna II , Zlink/adat expansion, A16 ultra, Emagic Logic 5.5.1

These motherboards were all ASUS. P4C800E delux, P4P800, P4C800. Between 1 and 2 gig ram and close to the fastest cpu available at the time [2.4-3.0]
Building again for creamware i would choose either asus P4C800e deluxe, or the intel D875PBZ. These are chosen because of the way the sata HDD/raid is connected to the motherboard without going through the pci bus. this has to be a plus for creamware users who sometimes get pci overflows.
If you using for graphics get 2 gig DDR 400 ram without question. Make sure its decent stuff as it DOES make a difference to longterm stability. Get 2x 2x512 matched sets by corsair or OCZ, or Kingston, and run in dual channel mode [800MHz]. [Check Ram with mobo manufactures spec]
Get a stable video card. Matrox have been known for stability with audio hardware, but most of them are fairly slow by
graphic/gamers standards. Video cards have been known to be incompatible with audio hardware, check before you buy that some one with your audio hardware has succesfuly used the card you intend to buy. I have used Leadtek GeForce FX5600 256MB DDR successfully. If i was choosing for audio only I would choose matrox as its 1 less potential problem.
Get a decent power supply as this too does/can make a difference in stability.
Im using a quiet Zalman ZM400A-APF.
Lastly get a fast sata HDD. If you want speed the Western Digital 10,000 rpm Raptor is a good choice/price.
I use have used these at work in raid 0.
I use quieter 7,200 rpm seagates in my audio setup but choosing again I will go for the fastest and sound proof my computer with timber box.

Next few points re CPU and fans.
Get the fastest Northwood [800MHz FSB] procesor you can afford 3.4 gig is cheap.[If you where thinking graphics only a dual zeon system would be a good choice but aparently there are creamware problems so i would avoid this]
If youve got the cash a P4EE 3.2 or 3.4[extreme edition] should be faster.
Dont even contemplate celeron cpu,s.
By all current testing, latest Prescot CPU's are hotter and not any faster, even slower.
The standard P4 fans can get really noisy. Get a quiet fan/cooler like the "Zalman CNPS 7000 cu" which I use with my work computers. It's very quiet but check with motherboard before if you consider this as some coolers including this one are very large and dont fit on all motherboards.

So as a Mac-Head your probably more confused than when you started.
I could only give [nearly] definite configurations for someone with my audio hardware/software choice as this is what I have tested.
Before you buy check at least someone has identical setup and are willing to guide you through the setup.
Many PC component sellers will make your PC up to your exact configuration if you are not up to building it yourself, and one thing is for certain, it WONT look as cool as a Mac G5.

Oh..and windows XP is the os of choice. I've had an audio PC since Atari with a GEM os and PC with win 95, XP is undoubtedly better.
If your using in networked environment get XP pro.

Hope that helps.

Maak Bow

Post by **hubird** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 7:21 pm

Post by **garyb** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 9:17 pm

it's really not as complicated as it might seem, but you will have to get you feet wet to know what's up....

personally, i would get an intel motherboard and processor, and just make sure that i avioded generic parts for the rest of the build(make sure to purchase the best quality ram you can get from a reputable manufacturer such as corsair or mushkin. i'd say 1g is a good idea)

as to acpi, if you don't have lot's of extra cards and devices in your computer, acpi will probably work fine. if you have problems you can change it.

hyperthreading is an intel gimmick that splits the cpu into 2 virtual processors for a SLIGHT performance gain. it also should work fine, but i disable it. i'd prefer stability over performance when the gains are so slight.(just an opinion)

any of the 800 series chipsets by intel will work great. you'll probably choose between 865 and 875. i doubt you'll see a major difference between the two. two favorite intel mainboards: d865perl and d875pbz..

amd is certainly an option, but i'll let an amd user tell you about it. for raw numbers amd may be superior, but once again, for ease of use and stability, i'd go all intel.

shopping around, i put a computer together recently including d865perl, p4 3ghz, 1gb corsair pc3200, westen digital 40gb hd, two western digital 160gb hds, sony cdrw, evga geforce mx4400 dual head 128mb video, antec case w/antec true power 400w power supply, m$ keyboard and mouse, 19" nec crt for about $1500 u.s. including xp professional. everything went together in a snap and with two pulsar2s it's pretty happening with no major tweaks. it's stable and fast. with a little luck you might do better.

don't worry about the future TOO much. pcs are constantly being upgraded and you surely won't keep up. just get something that's reasonably modern and you'll have a useful device for a while. trying to keep to the bleeding edge only encourages trouble and drains the pocketbook....

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 1:11 am

Thanks Maak Bow and garyb, nice long answers. Yes, some confusing stuff in there (initially), but i am already seeing a pattern, so any more recommendations welcome. i don't get all the jargon yet (what is raid?) but it seems that i can hopefully get a list of the most compatible components and try and get it mde up for me.

Keep 'em coming, i really am a PC f**kwit.

Mr A

PS Hubird, don't worry, still using the G4, hopefully upgrading its mobo to a Powerlogix and increasing the hard drive capacity etc (its looking a little old now but is still very good), but i am getting a PC for web design work, so i thought i'd try and make it SCOPE compatible as i have three cards and generally only use two in the Mac, so the third may end up in the PC as the Mac may become part of a recording project in another country, so the PC would be my 'prepping' SCOPE.

maakbow · Post by **maakbow** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 6:35 am

RAID
Its a way using several HHD's together for various reasons.
Simplified...the initial reason being security where data is mirrored to 1 or more drives [taking more hdd space obviously] so if drive goes down data is able to be recovered.
The other use is called striping, where data is split up and sent to 2 or more drives allowing for good hdd speed increases in certain circumstances.[but less security. If 1 drive goes all info is lost...but if you back up properly...]

Most motherboards [mobo's] i would reccomend have a simple but reasonable raid controller onboard should you choos to use it.

AS to your questions Re: ACPI etc.

This has mostly been an issue in older mobo's, and I have had some improvements NOT using it in the past, but others seem to still have an issue with it.

On a new Mobo XP is very good at assigning IRQ's for you. You can of course try the cards in different PCI slots to change the IRQ's assigned to them and ASUS mobo's usually allow manual IRQ assignment in the BIOS.
The prefered IRQ for soundcards is usually 9 then 10 but my system is great on 17 with ACPI on an old mobo.

It's a fairly simple thing to change once you know how but my advice would be...If a setup wont work without XP being in absolute default setup, then I wouldnt recomend it.[apart from creamware drivers and up to date aspi layer which is required for SFP obviously]

By all means when you are setup, then tweak away just to see if you get an improvement or not.

I would also recomend using a simple application that allows you to "dual boot" your system into 2 [or more] operating sytems.
I run two XP operating systems [OS's] one for graphics and the other tweaked for audio. When I boot up I make the choice which to boot into. The sofware [BootIt Next Generation] cost me aprox US $30 .

I will post a list of components I have researched for my impending upgrade as an example but as you have three cards...confirm with others that have the same 3 cards and run the same application...Which is BTW????

Maak Bow

[ This Message was edited by: maakbow on 2004-06-02 07:49 ]

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 11:20 am

i like your answers Maak, nice explanations, though you always throw in something new i don't know (Aspi layers?). Seriously this is like a whole new world to me, assume i know no jargon and i won't feel patronised. i am looking forward to your list - i think it would be a good basis for an ultimate recommended system.

i'm not actually sure yet if all three cards are going into the PC yet, but they are SCOPE SRB, Pulsar 2 Plus and PowerSampler (in the old nomenclature) and i run SFP3.1c, but will get SCOPE4 running soon.

i will certainly run XP Pro, but may look to Linux if there is any development that way. Sequencer on Mac is Cubase VST 5.1, may use SX on the PC and upgrade Mac to Logic as i don't like what i hear about SX for Mac.

Cheers so far, this is really helping,
Mr A

Pete · Post by **Pete** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 11:54 am

Hi,
Lots of us are having probs with interrupt-sharing. Since you have three cards, you might want to get a motherboard that will let you manually specify irqs. Apparently not all have that feature. I think it's a feature that's in the bios.

I seem to have benefitted from changing the ACPI control to Standard PC, as suggested in many posts. I no longer have blue-screens with the irq error message.
But I haven't found a way for me to specify which irqs my cards use, looks like as far as I can get, is to let bios configure them automatically.

My board is an ASUS A7N8X. I like that board, although I should have gotten the Deluxe model and gotten the SATA, Raid, and extra Lan. The manual irq allocation is the only other feature I wish I had.

Plato · Post by **Plato** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 12:30 pm

I would also recomend using a simple application that allows you to "dual boot" your system into 2 [or more] operating sytems.
I run two XP operating systems [OS's] one for graphics and the other tweaked for audio. When I boot up I make the choice which to boot into. The sofware [BootIt Next Generation] cost me aprox US $30 .

Actually you don't need any additional software to create a dual boot system....just install XP on two different HDs and you'll be given the choice on booting.

Mr Arkadin - for your info IRQ stands for interrupt request.....basically any hardware in the computer needs one, and it's best if main components in a DAW don't share them....you don't really need to know any more, but at0mic found some good info a couple of days ago if you're interested....

For XP: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314068

For XP & Win2000: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=252420

And more on IRQ's, standard pc & ACPI: http://www.fbinternet.org/optimize/ntaudio.htm

Also, I can thoroughly recommend going for an Intel mobo...
I use D865PERL + 1 Gb RAM, P4 2.80c processor, Cubase SX2 (bloody great!), Pulsar 2 + SRB and it's rock solid in Standard PC mode - [OK, that means no hyperthreading possible, but most of what I've read suggests the benefits aren't that great anyway]

[ This Message was edited by: plato on 2004-06-02 14:51 ]

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 2:07 pm

This is all good stuff. As well as the technical stuff i would like to know people's experiences re: using other programs as well as SCOPE on the same PC. This PC is not going to be a dedicated DAW like my Mac, i'll be using Dreamweaver and maybe Final cut Pro too. Obviously a separate partition/drive will be required, but are there any real dangers with this - am i asking for trouble?

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 3:06 pm

i've used première vega, maya, lightwave, photoshop, dreamwaver etc on the same pc and sometimes with cubase/scope running in the background. no problem. I do not know final cut and i never managed huge video files, but i don't see why it should be a problem.
The only thing is that matrox are very bad for 3d performances. The video/3d guys I know who have pcs would prefer a nvidia Quattro processor, but they are all into professional 3d stuff. I have an ati and it is fine as long as I put video acceleration Off in windows settings. But if you are sure not to use 3D, i guess matrox are fine.
Good luck.

[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2004-06-02 16:08 ]

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 7:56 pm

Another idea!

As suggested about the dual boot, this is the IDEAL way for your situation, have 2 operating systems on either separate drives or seperate partitions. This will give you in a sense 2 seperate PC's, so when ya wanna do graphics, boot the the graphics OS, when ya wanna do music boot to the music OS.

This is how I work, I keep my music OS, stripped down, no internet, totally optimized and everything I dont need turned off etc etc, I use the D875PBZ and it rocks big time.

Then I have a standard boot, for internet, games, email and all that crap with all my stuff like nortons, zone alarm etc etc, the reason is that when using my computer for normal activities it does not come near anything music related, it is basically having 2 PC's in one, hope that makes sense.

I would also recomend, having a dedicated fast HD for audio, and then partiton another drive for the dual boot.

Cheers!

maakbow · Post by **maakbow** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 10:47 pm

Actually you don't need any additional software to create a dual boot system....just install XP on two different HDs and you'll be given the choice on booting.

No you Dont but having used NT Bootloader and many dual boot apps, they are far better and more flexible than nt boot loader. Plus "Boot It Next generation" can run from floppy so if everything stuffs up its easy recovery.

To Mr Arkaden
ALSO..ASPI layer is something i didnt know about untill creamware made me aware of it. SFP includes full instructions.

ALSO SFP 4.0 installs and works like a charm. with LOGIC on my PC it is undoubtedly faster and more stable by a small amount.

Maak

[ This Message was edited by: maakbow on 2004-06-03 07:38 ]

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 9:39 am

Hi Maak, i was just wondering if you have made that PC components uberlist yet, it would be very helpful.

i've been printing out this thread plus the newer entries in the users' set-ups thread to try and collate an ultimate PC parts list.

Regarding video cards, could i use two different cards in one machine? What i mean is have one setup for SCOPE which uses say a Matrox as Space F suggested and then another set-up (on a different partition/hard disc) that utilises say an nVidea for video and web design work, ie. would i be able to get the PC to ignore the nVidea card whilst in SCOPE mode (and vice-versa) or would i have to edit the ini file or whatever everytime?

Thank you for your continued patience

Mr A

[ This Message was edited by: Mr Arkadin on 2004-06-13 10:40 ]

Plato · Post by **Plato** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 1:40 pm

You can easily do this by setting up a user profile in device manager....only the drivers for the hardware you select will be loaded at start-up.....you are asked which profile you want to use before windows boots up.

valis · Post by **valis** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 12:16 am

The problem is that you don't have 2 AGP slots so 1 card would wind up being PCI.

PCI graphics cards will be too slow to use for graphics intensive stuff (especially 3d) and place too much strain on the PCI bus for use with creamware cards.

Personally I would just ask yourself which is more important: strong 2d (after effects & photoshop, illustrator, flash etc) or do you also need robust 3d? (3d design apps or gaming?)

If you only need 2d then the Matrox cards are excellent, if you require 3d get an ATI or Nvidia card (I run nvidia with 0 problems and do ALL of the above). Matrox has very poor 3d performance even in their new Parahelion line, and honestly modern ATI & Nvidia cards offer perfectly acceptable 2d with the addition of robust 3d support so even without a Matrox card I doubt you would have any issues.

If you're using a specific app for video editing you may want to consider gearing your purchase towards that if it has specific requirements. Most modern apps should be fine with anything but smaller apps often support certain configurations better (much like our Creamware cards).

maakbow · Post by **maakbow** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 4:28 pm

Hi
Below is a list of parts i have ordered for a graphics machine for my work...im using matrox G650 as i hate fans.

matrox cards may not be fast for games but they are excellent for graphics. My current puter stil runs a 8Mb G200.
The only difference I would make for myself is i would use higher quality ram, 3.4gig cpu, and 2 sata HDD's raid 0.

Power supply----ZailmanZM400A-APF
MotherBoard-----Intel D875PBZ
CPU ---Intel P4 3.2Gig 800FSB northwood
Ram---2 Gig DDR400 geil[2x 2x512Mb dual channel kits...only CL2.5]
cpu Cooler---ZalmanCNPS7000 cu
Video card---Matrox G650
HDD---- western digital 36GB 10,000rpm SATA
The rest is irrelevant I guess.

Remember this is a puter for my work.
The intell mobo has no sound or firewire whichi we dont use anyway and i will purchasing a crappy soundcard for it.[itunes while u work]
Also of course Ibm keyboard logitech mouse and ubiquitous "black" CDRW, floppy and case.

If you want to go with a gforce FX5700 or something...definitely get the zalman fanless cooler for it..I have one of these things [fx5700]in my work puter and the fan is crappy...and you cant use PCI slot 1 as theyre so huge.

I am kindly building at up this puter at home for my work[hehe] I will do full xp pro install..ghost it, then install creamware/logic/scope etc so i can test it with my audio setup.

I will let you know.

Ram I would prefer is either corsair TWIN X PRO or OCZ pc3200 EL
[2x 2x512 dual channel kits]both are low latency but i know my boss wouldnt go for it.

[ This Message was edited by: maakbow on 2004-06-14 17:36 ]

maakbow · Post by **maakbow** » Sun Jun 27, 2004 7:18 am

Well I built the 3.2 gig system in the above post and checked out the audio performance with xp/logic 5.5.1/lunaII EX/A16 Ultra.
The XP OS was running on the 10,000 rpm IDE raptor drive

Apart from running projects that are currently stalling my existing sysytem I tested with logic cpu tests 1 and 2 as found on "digitalnaturalsound.com"[ the platinumverb test and the spectral gate test]
a straight track count test...mono 24bit 44.1kHz....no signal processing going on, but adding a compressor to each track didnt sem to affect the track count at all. I kept turning on tracks till the disk drive could not handle any more. [maxtor IDE ATA133 8MB cache 80gig]

XP standard install...63 pverbs, 60 spectral gates, 60 tracks.

XP Tweaked, hyperthreading ON, ACPI...72 pverbs, 65 spectral gates, 63 tracks.

XP Tweaked, hyperthreading OFF, ACPI...71 pverbs, 65 spectral gates, 63 tracks. screen redraws very slow.

XP Tweaked, hyperthreading OFF, Standard PC...73 pverbs, 65 spectral gates, 61 tracks. screen redraws very slow.

XP Tweaked, hyperthreading ON, Standard PC...73 pverbs, 65 spectral gates, 62 tracks. screen redraws pretty slow.

In all these tests at the limit logic cpu meter was always in the red...no probs.
With the Hyperthreading on the widows cpu meter shows about 51-52%
With hyperthreading OFF windows cpu meter showed 100%.

When I build my own system based on the above I will use the maxtor ATA133 as OS drive and 2 Raptors as recording drives raid 0, so hope for better track count[I'm looking for about 90]

seems performance is not up much from pervious tests i have done with P4C800Edlx 3 GIG and a 2 gig HP server.

The zalman cooler and PS are very quiet...HDD's become the bigest noise problem.

Maak

[ This Message was edited by: maakbow on 2004-06-27 08:25 ]

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 2:48 am

I don't think anybody has actually explained what ACPI *is*. Basically it allows Windows to make all the IRQ arrangements (I can't believe we're still using IRQs these days) and set up IRQ sharing. The problem a lot of people have is that Windows forces all cards to operate at IRQ 9. While that normally shoudn't be a problem, some cards (like Scope) might not like sharing an IRQ with other devices and might have performance problems. Standard PC mode, on the other hand, lets the motherboard BIOS make the IRQ arrangements, and you can even (on some boards) change what PCI slots get which IRQ. So this has improved things for some people (I personally operate in Standard PC because everyone else said to!).

Here's where you can get even more confused: modern motherboards have a feature called APIC (not to be confused with ACPI) that, along with ACPI, allows Windows to assign 24 IRQs instead of 16! In this case you DO want to run in ACPI mode *and* APIC mode. (Do you have a headache yet?)

Peripheral suggestions:

It's really best if you build your own PC from scratch. I know that sounds awful, but PC makers always skimp on something and have proprietary cases and other weird things.

I think everybody here agrees that ASUS motherboards are the best. You can use either Intel or AMD CPUs at this point: there were some issues a couple of years ago, but those have been ironed out since then. Find the latest chipset from either Intel or nVidia (nVidia seems to be the best for an AMD system) that uses DDR RAM, not Rambus. I think memory is up to DDR 400 now, so go with that.

I have an ATi video card with my triple-CreamWare system, and it works fine. I'm sure nVidia and Matrox are great too -- they're probably all about the same for normal applications. The big differences lie in the 3D games.

Buy a big hard drive. Windows can run its setup program off the CD and allow you to partition and format the drive -- you'll want to use NTFS. I know everyone thinks you should have two hard drives, but honestly I've never, ever, had a problem with one. Serial ATA seems to be the latest greatest thing, but since hard drives themselves operate at a far slower speed than the bus, I don't know if there's a huge improvement over ATA133, or ATA100 or ATA66 for that matter.

If at all possible, get a motherboard that includes FireWire!! Don't worry if it has an onboard audio chip -- you can use it alongside Scope or turn it off in the BIOS.

When you first boot up your new computer, you'll want to enter the BIOS by pressing "delete". There you can make changes to your system, including turning off the old, ancient serial and parallel ports to save IRQs. Most of the items you can leave alone.

Assembling the computer should be fairly easy if you know how to screw things together! Have fun.

Cheers,

Shayne

_________________
Discover Human Music by Shayne White at: http://www.shaynesworld.com

[ This Message was edited by: Shayne White on 2004-06-30 03:51 ]

Plato · Post by **Plato** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 5:26 am

I think the 'everything on IRQ 9' thing was only in Win 2000, Shayne.