Upgrading my motherboard and processor?

[bdunard]

I will be upgrading my motherboard, processor, and RAM in the next couple of months and have a few questions. I currently have a P41.6, 1GB Ram, and four harddrives (I use a raid board without the raid functioning). My main programs are Samplitude 7, Sonar 4, and BFD.

1. Should I look at the AMD 64's or stick with the P4's?

2. Is there a certain chipset or motherboard I should look for, or one I should stay away from regarding either AMD or Intel?

3. Where would you recommend buying a combo such as this online?

4. Is there anything coming down the pipe that I wish I would have waited for if I would upgrade in the next couple of months?

Thanks for your help.

[Hammer v2]

It really depends on your sound card. Go to the manufacturers webpage and see what they say. As far as I know both of those programs will work great with either p4 or athlon 64. However the athlon 64 will give you a higher track count with lower latency. They are designed differently than p4s and make rather fine audio chips. If you can afford it..get a dual Opteron, smokes everything .

But all that aside...check your sound card manufacturers webpage .

Also, It's an idea to get the guys a the computer shop to do the upgrade for you...even if you know how to do it yourself. If the motherboard is dodgy or somethings up..it's prob best that it gets sorted in the shop before you start pulling your hair out at home. (Been there, done that ).

good luck

[robdarling]

Your best source of info for this stuff is the Nuendo Hardware forum. The users have the highest standards for performance of any in the online forums and are very generous with their knowledge. Have the decency to do a search first, though. Your topic has been very well-covered there.

[bdunard]

I am using the Hammerfall HDSP9652. I will definitely do a search at the nuendo forum. It looks like the AMD FX-53 chip is really nice but man it's expensive. Is there something that has 1 MB of L2 Cache that is not $900.

[Hammer v2]

It looks like the AMD FX-53 chip is really nice but man it's expensive. Is there something that has 1 MB of L2 Cache that is not $900.

And AMD64 chip from 3200 onwards will be heaps hey. The cache doesn't make a huge difference. The FX is more of a showpony...It's just not worth the entry fee...You're better off goin a couple of notches down and getting a 3500+ and putting the $400 you save towards some big fat juicy outboard that won't be a doorstop in 3 years time.

[drosophila]

Processor-wise, I suppose it depends on budget. I'll preface this by saying i'm biased towards AMD, but I acknowledge that Intel has their own tasty offerings.

First tip is, ignore CPU speed altogether, because at this point, it really is meaningless. There are simply too many architecture variations between the companies for it to be that black and white.

Anyway,
1.) I'd steer you towards something like an AMD Athlon XP ClawHammer 3400+ (1MB L2 Cache version). $230 will get you running immensely fast, without obliterating the bank.

2.) Take yer shiny new CPU and pair it with a sturdy motherboard from a company like Asus - strongly avoid ECS or Biostar. Everyone has their opinions, but Asus is a good bet - I run an Albatron motherboard right now, my girlfriend an AOpen, and we're both happy, though.

Chipset-wise, NVIDIA nForce3 250 and the VIA K8's are both safe. Tradeoffs for each, but both are good choices. You'll see more hype for Nvidia, though, as they tend to gear things towards gamers. We've got systems here based on chipsets from both companies, and frankly, I can't tell the ****ing difference.

Avoid *anything* with onboard video, make sure it supports dual-channel memory, and you'll be OK.

3.) For purchasing, I can highly recommend Newegg, Monarch Computer, and ZipZoomFly. Price watch between them to catch sick deals and get anything you could possibly want. Do *not* go to someplace like Frys/Circuit City/etc. They know ****-all and will steer you wrong. People will also steer you towards pricewatch.com - I recommend this only as a gauge for pricing. There are *many* dealers of ill-repute lurking and ready to sell you refurbished shit at a new price. Check resellerratings.com before you trust one.

4.) Sadly, there's a lot coming down the pipe, which is why i haven't upgraded. In general, they are:

- PCI-Express support on AMD chipsets. What's special about this for gamers/designers, besides just regular ol' faster speed, is SLI. This will allow the use of *two* PCI-Express video cards, which is just sick. For a dedicated DAW, however, this won't matter too much.

- SATA revision II w/ NCQ. 300GB/sec for hard drive I/O. 'Nuff said. Technically, this is available now. Seagate is already pumping out compatible hard drives. Motherboards don't support it yet, but Promise makes PCI cards that can handle 'em.

- More widespread Firewire800 support, which is potentially useful if you have devices that support it or are banking on more devices supporting it (it'll happen, slowly).

- New chipsets to support all this funky stuff, which would deem your motherboard "old", but your CPU will be upwards compatible.


Sorry if this is too generalized or anything. I can't simply say, "buy products a, b, and c and you'll be rockin'", largely because I don't know your budget or whether or not you use your system for non-DAW things. Feel free to ask if you want some guidance finding something more directly suitable to your uses. Personally, i'd wait until about February, since a lot of the above will be more heavily implemented and we'll see after-holiday sales.

[drosophila]

Oh yeah, and above all else, put most of your cash into memory. Just avoid the cheap stuff you see in most stores and look for the expensive stuff geared to overclockers - you won't likely be overclocking, but the latency timings are a lot tighter, which will speed your system up immensely. 2-2-2-6 is a good figure to look for.

If you're going for 1GB+, though, expect to drop *at least* $200 (and that's if you find something on sale).

[bdunard]

Wow, thanks for such a great reply! I am willing to spend $600 for the combo upgrade. So you think the 64 bit AMD is not necessary right now...or is the clawhammer 64 bit? Also, I see all these SATA drives on the motherboards will my ATA harddrives work with SATA or would I need new drives. Thats a whole other expense! I would like to get something that is more powerful and faster than my p41.6 that is geared to low latency since I am using some vsti's to record parts with. I can wait until Feb. I think. Once again thanks for your reply!

[drosophila]

$600 is a good, practical budget, imo, as you can build the bulk of your system with just that.

$86.50 - Albatron K8Ultra-V Pro Socket-754 Motherboard
$245.00 - AMD Athlon 64 ClawHammer 3400+ 2.2GHz 1MB L2 Socket-754 CPU
$11.99 - Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 TC Socket-754 CPU Heatsink/Fan
$7.59 - Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste
$245.00 - Mushkin Black 222 LII V2 PC-3200 DDR-SDRAM

About $596.08 total, not counting shipping. At the end of the day, you're getting a ridiculously fast CPU,
premium quality memory (and believe me, you will KNOW where that money went when you start working!), and
a motherboard with a lot of upgrade life. At this point, you can still use your existing hard drives,
power supply*, burners, etc. and you'll save money without shelling out cash for upgrades that probably
aren't very necessary right now.

As for the SATA, it's an evolution of the ATA spec. While you can plug an ATA drive into an SATA port with an adapter, there's no point performance-wise. The motherboard above supports both types, though; use your ATA for now, and when you're ready to move up to SATA, just swap out the old drives and cables for shiny, new SATA drives and *much* smaller cables.

I would highly suggest adding a new power supply, though. Not sure what you have now, but putting some
cash towards a 480w Enermax or Tagan PSU will benefit your sytem stability quite a bit.

If you want to bump things up from all this, tack on cash for new SATA hard drives. Seagate and Western Digital are my all-around faves, Samsung's are the quietest (and slowest), Hitachi's run fast as shit but loud as hell, and Maxtor can't seem to decide whether or not their quality control is on duty or not. Pick among them :p

You might also think about investing in a good case, too. Airflow, heat buildup, vibration, etc.. these all come into play
quite a bit. I used to pick up somewhat 'bargain' cases, but after countless scrapes, dust bunnies, and other obnoxious crap, I picked up Lian-Li cases for the both of us (V1000B and PC-6070, respectively). EASILY the best things i've ever bought, and in retrospect, I wish I would've done it sooner. The nice thing is, you only really buy a case like that once - after that, you can just keep changing stuff internally, if you need to, regardless of whether or not it's AMD or Intel.

If you're a serious gamer, i'd probably say scratch everything I listed above except for the CPU, Heatsink, and Thermal Paste, and wait for the new motherboards from Asus or Albatron or whoever that support PCI-Express video cards. Right now, the PCI-Express boards only seem to work with Socket-949 (Athlon 64-FX) CPU's, which is waaay beyond the budget we're discussing. We'll see what happens in the New Year.

My advice: take the above specs, work it to suit you, and build a screaming system. Forget the hooplah of PCI-Express and all that until the spec is actually matured.

[bdunard]

Once again you have outdone yourself. thumbsup I have never heard of the motherboard or ram you mentioned. Is Albatron as good as a Gigabyte board. Also, do you think the 64 bit 3200+ 939 socket has any benefits over the 754 for audio? I have a silent Zalman power supply at 400 watts. I am not a gamer at all I just use this PC for audio. Hmmm, I am starting to wonder how much faster this will be than my P41.6. Hopefully alot!

[drosophila]

Haha, it's no problem, really. I've been building computers for about a decade now, and it's kinda nice to occasionally pass that experience on.

Funny you mention the Albatron vs. Gigabyte thing, though, as Albatron apparently employs a lot of ex-Gigabyte (and AOpen) employees :p

That said, I run an Albatron KX18D ProII motherboard on my Athlon XP system.. runs beautifully. Conversely, I recently built a system for a friend using a Gigabyte board, and it also ran great. It's all about the same.

As for Socket-939 vs. Socket-754, the answer is, yes and no.

Socket-754 uses single-channel memory, 1MB L2 cache, 800Mhz HyperTransport FSB.

Socket-939 uses dual-channel memory, 512k L2 cache (unless you want to spend $700 on just the CPU), and 1000Mhz HyperTransport FSB.

As a quick mention, don't worry too much about the 200Mhz FSB difference. Intel's been trying to use it as their ace-in-the-hole for years, and AMD still kicked their ass. It's not irrelevant, it's just not that important for what we're discussing.

The general consensus is that the architecture of the Athlon 64 benefits very little from dual-channel memory, and considerably moreso from a larger L2.

Someone else mentioned that L2 cache is not worth paying extra for.. I would heavily disagree. Back in the day, a few of the Pentium 3 processors carried a hefty premium, as did the 64-bit DEC Alpha processors (which AMD's spec is based on) - both largely because of their L2 cache (512k and 1-2MB, iirc). Broken down simply, the L2 acts as ferryman between the CPU and your memory, and this is vitally important for audio, esp. softsynths and fx.

So, let's say you've got a system with a reeaaaally fast CPU, reaaallly fast FSB, and realllly fast memory, but a small L2 cache? It bottlenecks data trying to usher shit from point a to point b.

As for how much faster, I'd venture to say quite a bit. Larger L2 cache, faster FSB, improve thermal resistance, etc. Put bluntly, my Athlon XP 1.9GHz spanks your P4 1.6GHz, the Athlon 64's spank the living crap out of both of them *and* most of the higher-end P4's from the past year or so.

I still cast my vote in the Socket-754 camp, but i'm sure you'll be able to decide on your own. Just bear in mind that everyone's going to have varying opinions - on the audio side, though, the things ultimately affecting your performance are going to be the onboard cache, memory latency/size, and audio interface. Your CPU will mean ****-all if you don't have solid choices for each of those areas.

[bdunard]

I have a hammerfall HDSP 9652 that works really well for me. I just upgraded my tower to a ThermalTake and put all of my stuff in it so basically I will just slap a new mobo combo in it when the time comes. I think I will probably go with the AMD 64 socket 754 with the 1 MB of L2 cache. I would go all the way out there and get the 939 socket but it doesn't seem like the extra money (almost double) is going to give me double the output. One thing I do plan on purchasing is a 10,000 rpm SATA for my BFD samples. Since BFD streams from disk I figure this might help. Where do you purchase all of the stuff you mentioned above? Is there anyone that has all that stuff under one roof and maybe even puts it together in combo form? I just want to again thank you for your informative posts. They really have helped alot!

[drosophila]

Nice choice of interface, btw... i'm thinking of grabbing one of the new Echo Layla 3G's myself, though i'm waiting for at least *one* review to surface.

If you're going the SATA route, slap in one of the newer Western Digital WD740 drives. Soooo friggin' fast!

As for purchasing, I snagged all the prices I quoted from newegg.com and monarchcomputer.com. You might compare pricing between them, monarchcomputer.com, and zipzoomfly.com. Sometimes, even though it's less convenient, i've found *big* price differences ($20+ being "big" here).

Good luck on the upgrades... I can certainly empathize with the position you're in right now, as i've spent the last few hours plotting upgrades for my home theater system :p

Oh, if only we had unlimited budgets..

[bdunard]

In addition to the Echo 3g's, I would definitely look at the new lynx boxes. Check them out at lynxstudio.com I have bought from all three of those places. I usually use Monarch since they are in Atlanta and I am in Nashville. The one thing I have never done is put a processor onto a motherboard. Also, I have no idea where or what the thermal grease is? Oh well I guess there is a first time for everything, hmm mayble I will have monarch put it together on second thought!

[drosophila]

Honestly, i'm still a little torn between the LynxTWO-C and Layla 3G.. both have the I/O I need, but it comes down to the converters. Do I go for the LynxTWO and use the internal ADDA, or grab the Layla and save extra for converters that top both? I can't afford $2k converters atm otherwise i'd grab the Aurora 8, but my thought was to pair the Layla w/ a Benchmark DAC1 and come somewhere in the middle.

The CPU installation, btw, is actually pretty easy, you just have to be a little careful. No force should be involved slotting it in; just lift the latch next to the socket point, seat the CPU directly above it, and shift it slightly so the pins line up - it'll drop right into place. As long as you keep it flat and let it drop instead of pushing it, it's no biggie.

Thermal grease acts as a conductivity layer between the CPU and heatsink. Any little imperfections in the metal, air pockets, etc are filled in with it. You only really need a veryvery thin layer - thick enough that the surface of the CPU core (not the heatsink) is coated and not translucent, but thin enough that you don't have any glops. It's actually really, really easy (seriously). I've never had problems installing the CPU or applying the thermal paste, even the very first time (and I was about 12 or 13 years old!)