Time to upgrade the processor/motherboard. Need advice.

[Parisongs]

I'm wanting to upgrade my motherboard since my DAW was built in Sept of 2003 and its getting to be the time for more power. I need some recommendations without any real budget constraints- just varried configs and prices. What I have now is a 2.8ghz Intel P4 with 2 gig ram, Antec tower, 430 watt power supply, 120, 120, 80 gig IDE drives. I would like something that has SATA capability as well as IDE if that is a possibility. Also, what pitfalls could I run into with licensing of software doing this upgrade?

[manning1]

it would really help to know your budget limits if any.
as well as what performance you expect .
ie track and plug in counts.
the problem your going to run into is the whole pc market is fast moveing.
the hot motherboard this month might not be 4 months down the road.
therefore its best to do what i do and spend time testing different configurations.
with your projects and your audio software you use.
there is also a major trend i feel occurring. viz...gradually laptops are getting
more and more powerfull. AND its a possibility that tower configs over the coming years will decline in popularity. why am i saying all this ??
the answer is to stay open minded.
for example i know people who are very happy with their new amd turion 64 laptops. i know others happy with the new intel core duos.
yesterday i compared however a really cheap 600 buk dual amd 64 processor
tower against a number of laptops and it really flew. very impressive.
blew away the laptops.(poor hard drives in the laptops was the reason.)
the key point is a system is only as good as its weakest link.
the motherboard is just one aspect. AND DONT THINK buying a fancy expensive motherboard is the cure all. ive seen some cheap motherboards perform very well. why ?? because the hard drives chosen were very fast with fat on board caches. in summary our work of multitracking likes disc drives with nice big caches. eg 16 mb is better than 8 mb.
then there is the power supply. too many times ive seen folks spend oodles on the motherboard and put in some junk power supply.
In summary..heres what i would look at.
1. fast dual processor.(if you can afford it.)
2. a power supply thats overspecced just in case you add more peripherals in the future.
3. drives with 16 mb cache.
(if you DO at some point look at laptops (for portable recording) BE AWARE
that even though the processors in them are fast these days, a LOT are coming with puny levels of ram and crappy slow hard drives. (thus youll need to upgrade these components.)
4. on the motherboard specifically watch out for poor firewire and/or usb
implementations. just in case say you add a firewire sound device for multitracking. in ADDITION dont blindly buy a new motherboard without testing it with your chosen sound devices.
whether pci or usb or firewire. this is where the rubber hits the road !!
also on the motherboard inspect it carefully and run tests.
one problem to be aware of on motherboards, and they all suffer from this is youll notice lots of round cylindrical capacitors used. the problem with capacitor technology is over time caps can degrade. they all suffer from this.
thus i tend to go with motherboards with as few caps as possible. sadly this is not always practical though. In essence motherboards have become disposable commodity items.
just some things to think about. all the best.

[david1103]

Pitfalls are that new motherboards are phasing out IDE, the latest INTEL chipsets are only supporting 1 IDE slot. With all your hard drives that may be a problem.

If you get a new motherboard you should get a new CPU and RAM, otherwise the improvement will be very small. Also, the new motherboards probably won't support your CPU anyway...

If you get a new CPU, i would advise waiting until August when the new INTEL Core 2 Duo (Conroe) is out. Read here all about it:

http://news.com.com/Core+launch+mean...3-6081866.html

Get an ASUS motherboard too, these are the best quality and seem to work very well with DAWS. You could check somewhere like www.cubase.net to read about various DAW setups?

Good luck!

[Parisongs]

Well, I don't know if I want to buy something brand new and untested- IE The new Intels.Eventually I plan to add a laptop to my arrsenal. Forget budget constraints. I need a proven motherboard and a dual core or dual processor setup to compliment my drives. Will I have to buy new memory?