New Music PC, comments anyone?

WayneSim · Post by **WayneSim** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 4:25 am

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to build a new PC for music in the very near future. I have done some research into it and this is the system i have come up with.

CPU - P4 2.6, 800 fsb
MOBO - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe
RAM - 2 x 512mb PC3200 (run in dual mode)
HDD - Seagate 120gb SATA 8mb (Audio, gigs)
HDD - Seagate 60gb ATA 2mb (Win Xp, audio apps)

I have all the rest of the componets already like, CD burner, Case, PSU, etc. Audio cards are Creamware Pulsar 2 and Luna 2 (totaling 9 DSP chips. Software will be Gigastudio, Kontakt as a plugin. Cubase VST and Scope.

Any comments on these parts would be great. Also I'm not sure on what ram to get. Is it worth getting faster ram?

Thanks,
Peter

petal · Post by **petal** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 5:14 am

Nice - That's about what I would get if I were to build a new system today, except I think it's a good idea to get a fast HDD for windows and apps. I'm considering getting me one of these babies: Western Digital Raptor 36 GB, 8MB, SATA, 10000 RPM:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/current/ ... 0gdrtl.asp

It's a bit expensive but it's almost as fast as SCSI-disks and compared to those it's cheap. The only problem I might see with this one is maybe heat and noise - but I still havn't seen, heart or felt one in action yet.

Thomas

WayneSim · Post by **WayneSim** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 5:51 am

Thanks for your suggestion. Yeah they are pretty expensive those WD 36g 10,000 rpm SATA drives. They cost more than the Seagate 120gb SATA!!! I'll look into it though. Sound great, But costly

.

What about a normal seagate 80g ata 8mb buffer? The trouble is it's hard to get a small hard drive with the 8mb buffer, right? I don't think many retailers stock them.

Also any comments on ram? I'm thinking of getting a dual pack. Maybe Geil or OCZ. They are good but not to pricy.

Cheers,
Peter

Rob van Berkel · Post by **Rob van Berkel** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 6:11 am

Ok, let's play "can you spot the 7 differences?"

Here's my config:

CPU - P4 2.8, 800 fsb
MOBO - ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe
RAM - 2 x 512mb PC3200 (run in dual mode)
HDD - Seagate 80gb ATA 2mb (Audio)
HDD - Seagate 60gb ATA 2mb (Win Xp, audio apps)

Let me help you: there's only 2 differences: the cpu is 2.8 instead of 2.6 and the Audio disk is 80Gb/2Mb pATA.
I would love to have one of those new sATA drives with 8Mb, but this set does what it should do. I'm running a tweaked XP with the memory-tweaks from the EarlyFirst post in "tips and tricks". Furthermore I completely disabled the page-file. All I can say about it's performance is: WOW!!
e.g. the MV-test (15 MV's) was limited by the 12 DSP, not by the PCI-bus, VDAT records 48 channels of 24 bit in the background while I'm still able to open Logic or Wavelab to do other tasks.
So, to answer your initial question, I think you have a very good system planned there. One advice: stay away from the Promise pATA sATA RAID controller - it shares bandwidth with your PCI bus.
Good luck building your dream system

Cheers,
Rob

_________________
ERROR: signature not found. fake it (Y/n)?

[ This Message was edited by: Rob van Berkel on 2003-10-17 07:14 ]

petal · Post by **petal** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 6:25 am

On 2003-10-17 06:51, WayneSim wrote:
Thanks for your suggestion. Yeah they are pretty expensive those WD 36g 10,000 rpm SATA drives. They cost more than the Seagate 120gb SATA!!! I'll look into it though. Sound great, But costly .

As my friend Mikkel would say in a situation like this (directly translated from Danish):
Faster and funnier!

But then again, he also said: More drunk and funnier!

I used to agree with him though........

Rob van Berkel · Post by **Rob van Berkel** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 7:27 am

One thing about the RAM: have your retailer guarantee the combination of Mobo and Ram, as not all PC3200 ddr rams are equally succesfull in the new generation of motherboards, the Asus board not being an exception to that. (this has everything to do with the PC3200 standard not being an official Jedec standard). My dealer guaranteed the board to work with the Corsair TwinX1024-3200llpt. This is a matched pair of extreme low latency 512Mb pc3200 memory (being 1024Mb total).
And yes, they work

Cheers,
Rob

spoimala · Post by **spoimala** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 9:25 am

I haven't read benchmarks lately, but at the time I was buying my new machine, I noticed that either SATA or ATA is faster in writing data and the other in reading. (At least Seagate Barracuda))
Is this the situation now, too?

I would put the "fast reader" to contain GIG's and "fast writer" for audio.
Apps and windows doesn't matter so much, because you only load them once (the faster the better, though)

petal · Post by **petal** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 9:42 am

The reason that SATA and ATA/IDE-speeds are about the same, is that the SATA-interface hasn't been fully exploided yet. SATA is still transfering data to the system through the same datachannels as ATA/IDE-interface, which have never been fully exploided by the way.
This problem should be solved in the near future, with new MOBO-designs with integrated SATA-controllers and the proper data-channels which can handle the faster data-stream.

Thomas

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 2:10 pm

we noticed performance problems with asus p 4 c deluxe 800 here in direct compare to asus p 4 p 800!
make shure that you get hardware revision 2.0. !
this point semms to be important for steinberg and hyperthreading!
we did serveral testes here...
i cannot recommend any deluxe version becaus there are no free irqs for the pci-slots...

good luck,
andre

by the way,
asus ai overclocking rocks!
my p4 2.4 ghz is running @ 3.1 ghz

[ This Message was edited by: Andre Dupke on 2003-10-17 15:12 ]

Sunshine · Post by **Sunshine** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 5:34 am

On 2003-10-17 15:10, Andre Dupke wrote:
i cannot recommend any deluxe version becaus there are no free irqs for the pci-slots...

Which exact mobo can you recommend which has the 875 chiset and provides free IRQs?

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 8:48 am

i cannot recommend the 875 chipset for audio!
go for 865 (asus p4 p800)...

paulrmartin · Post by **paulrmartin** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 8:55 am

On¦2003-10-18¦09:48,¦Andre¦Dupke¦wrote:
i¦cannot¦recommend¦the¦875¦chipset¦for¦audio!
go¦for¦865¦(asus¦p4¦p800)...

Why?

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 8:58 am

less performance in a direkt compare....
we tested the asus p 4 p800, p 4 p800 deluxe, p4 c800 and p4 c800 deluxe.
we got the best performance with the p 4 p800...

Rob van Berkel · Post by **Rob van Berkel** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 2:50 pm

And what differences in performance did you experience? Will it be noticable for the intended use of a DAW?
I doubt it.
Cheers,
Rob

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 3:32 pm

the challange was to set up a daw with the latest asus-mainboads that handles the same amount of nuendo2 PlugsIns as the asus p 4 t 533 c without audio-crackles @ same buffersize.

the p4 p800 rev. 2 was the only board that passed this test.

what kind of test did you expect here???

[ This Message was edited by: Andre Dupke on 2003-10-18 16:42 ]

Rob van Berkel · Post by **Rob van Berkel** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 5:02 pm

what kind of test did you expect here???

Pulsar related tests?

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 5:19 pm

It's just a fantastic choice, very good indeed. The rest is pure tweaking and being careful the way you build it up, program compatibility, etc. I truly like component's choices.

WayneSim · Post by **WayneSim** » Sat Oct 18, 2003 6:36 pm

Thanks for all the comments guys.

I'm really intersted about Andre Dupke findings. Did you turn off all the hardware features in the bios that you would not use on the P4C800-E Deluxe?

One thing that really interests me is that the great "Subhuman" who some of you may know was a great member of these forums(not sure if he still posts much). The DAW's he sells have ASUS P4C800 Deluxe for the "Dream Machine" and the "Budget" machine he has ASUS P4P800 Deluxe. He his a great guy and I would trust that he has tested and tried all the Asus boards. http://www.infinitevortex.com/default.asp?page=p4daw

Not to discount your findings Andre Dupke but you are the first person to say, buy the cheaper board. Did you do any Scope tests? Did you fully tweak each board inculding turning off some fetures in the bios? What OS where you using?

Thanks,
Peter

Rob van Berkel · Post by **Rob van Berkel** » Sun Oct 19, 2003 2:52 am

On 2003-10-18 19:36, WayneSim wrote:
Thanks for all the comments guys.

I'm really intersted about Andre Dupke findings. Did you turn off all the hardware features in the bios that you would not use on the P4C800-E Deluxe?

Thanks,
Peter

One aspect is being overlooked here: you and I talk about the P4C800-E Dlx, Andre only mentions the non-E version of this board. And yes, for my experiences I disable all the unused devices in BIOS (COM2, FireWire, Promise-controller). As mentioned before, all devices got their own interrupt-handler in XP, so there's no sharing.
So, some of us do agree in the chosen components, others don't. The question now is: what do you find important. Reputation, stability, functionality, performance ( - in what area). Comparing should address all these aspects and you should weigh them. I think you already did

Good luck and happy building,
Rob

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Sun Oct 19, 2003 5:22 am

we tried to tweak all tested systems to the max!
disabling onboard devices makes no performance-advantage...

the tested c-version board was the MB ASUS P4C-800E-Deluxe! (there is no version without an "e" here in gremany)

for shure, all systems are tested with pulsar2, sfp 3.1c (flt asio source and dest), xp home sp1, nuendo 2.1 and hypertheading

we noticed no pci-overflow-problems with all boards...

all boards are stable for shure but who want´s to get crackels @ low latencies and hi system load if HT is acitve?

good luck,
andre

p.s.
these tests took about 2 days and we worked together with the asus and steinberg support... (thanx again)

[ This Message was edited by: Andre Dupke on 2003-10-19 07:26 ]