Best Computer

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2003 4:53 pm

Opus, you said,

Quote:

Echo Audio, two products here. Mona and Layla.

Is there a specific reason you left the EchoAudio Gina 24 out of this list?

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 8:27 pm

I left the Gina out due to limited I/O capabilities. Also more so just to give an brief overview, and not listing every product out there!

Opus Very Happy

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2003 8:57 am

as far as software, also check out www.samplitude.com

Howdy Opus!

Brock

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2003 2:51 pm

As far as motherboards go .I would suggest Tyan .The tiger is rock and I mean Rock solid!!It is a server board built in southern california not the orient!You can find a article on builting the ultimate music pc in EQ magazine {issue eight}using a tyan s2460 motherboard and 2 AMD-mp 2000-processors although I used 2 Intel p4 chips.This board has been tested succesfully withsound cards from RME-FRONTIER DESIGN MOTU- AND M-AUDIO.This board offers6 32bit 5.5 volt pci slots.My opinion is Asus is alright but really not on par with the performance and sure AAA quality chips used at the Tyan factory.My advice like its counter parts Mac go American go Tyan.

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2003 7:00 pm

Oh boy!

Tyan is not as reliable as Asus or Abit. In fact you have to go out of your way to get the proper memory and power supply, you don't have as many configurable options in the BIOS as the other boards as well!

Look on any other major hardware forums and count the number of Asus, Abit or Gigabyte users and then count the number of Tyan users(you'll see a HUGE ratio difference!)

Opus

Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2003 3:50 am

Opus I have a question about a motherboard. I was doing some research on motherboards and I was lookin at the asus p4c8oo MB. One of the features on this MB is the Soundmax onboard audio codec controller. I have an RME 96/36 LE soundcard and Is this going to be a problem? Because I have a PIII 1GHz with the Asus CUSL2 MB and it has onboard audio and I have had nothing but problems with it Audio clicks and screen freezes. I am considering this MB and the p43.0 800mhz chip and two of those new WD 10,000 rpm drives have you done any research on this board or are you waiting for the bugs to be worked out?

Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2003 6:50 pm

The 800Mhz series chipset boards, from any manufacturer are going to be nice....BUT...(there's a catch here of course...) Intel has recalled the 1st batch of 3.0 800Mhz CPU's for a "minor" bug that they are not going into detail about! I would personally wait and not be the first on the block to go and get it.
Also the SATA WD drives are not that much improvement and besides SATA is still early in the development stage. It still has another year to go before it's where it should be.

I would wait until it's totally finished before even going that route to be honest!

Having an onboard audio does not cause issues...it's more than that that's causing it most likely

Opus

Posted: Thu May 01, 2003 1:19 am

Gary,Peace brother if you think ASUS is good I respect that, no need for bad blood I was just stressing my opinion.I think you have many valuable points Ive read on various threads you have contributed to.What is your take on Intel motherboards?

Posted: Thu May 01, 2003 9:38 am

Intel boards were terrible in the past due to them putting advanced features for over clocking and other areas of the BIOS.

Nowadays they're very reliable boards and I'm actually looking into the one with the 875 chipsets...personally I am holding off until PCI express comes out. That's where the true power is going to come into play.

Understand this, once PCI Express is out, Macs will not stand a chance in hell in catching up in performance! This is a reality check for Apple at that point! 800Mhz FSB and a throughput of at least 6GB via the PCI bus! Bottleneck will be a word of the past!!

Opus Very Happy

Posted: Fri May 02, 2003 5:19 am

I've owned both ASUS (a K7) and Tyan (the tigermp 2460 board mentioned above) and loved both of them.

I built w/ the Tyan just after the product launched...in fact, the first OS I ran on the new board was XP Pro in Beta form...I think that was Feb/March of 2001...my how time flies.

In any case, although I can't vouch for Tyan in general, and I do believe that ASUS has a larger user base, this particular board has been unbelieveably stable under heavy loads...I use a ton of plugins.

The ASUS was also very good, but it had onboard audio too, and I had to completely disable it in order to get things to operate smoothly. (Jah_Ill please note). Once it was ***hardware*** disconnected at the jumper settings, then it operated flawlessly.

I too, anxiously await the PC Express technology, Opus. I'm waiting for the product bugs to get worked out while patiently knowing that eventually the technology will age just slightly, and the price will moderate accordingly.

Until then, I'll happily run with my Tyan dual processor board.

Best-

Kev.

Posted: Sun May 04, 2003 2:54 pm

I've also been reading reviews on the new slew of 875 boards...
There doesn't seem to be any one MB that pulls ahead of the pack performance-wise, but Asus' P4C800 is the leader in the cost/features ratio. Sad

Posted: Sun May 04, 2003 6:00 pm

Angelo!!!! Holy shit!! You're alive! lmao!
How the hell are ya bub?!!!

Anyways, in regards to the new 875 chipsets...remember that the true CPU's for thses boards are not out yet! Their only the 512 L2 cache and not the 1MB cache yet!
So I would personally wait until those are out before getting into those boards!
Once the L2 cache arrives, then that's where the true performance will begin!!!

Opus

Posted: Sun May 04, 2003 8:52 pm

Doin fine thanks, yourself?

I'm putting together a little writing setup at home. Already got the Echo mia-MIDI card. Happy as dookie with the sound and features, considering the price. But I'm getting frustrated with my :shudder: Presario. It's fast enuf to get some idea tracks down, but crash crash crash whenever I try to run audio and midi at the same time. I know it could be the os or 10 other things, but even if it stops crashing I can see the track/fx ceiling coming. So... good time to build me a new tower. Between your suggestions in this thread and raping as much as I can off the Presario, I figure I'm in for about $800.

Asus says they won't have PCIExp on the shelf until someundisclosedtimein04. I can't wait that long, so I was fixin to go with what's available now, and plug new stuff in as it comes out.
But... if I have to wait a year for 1MB L2 to come out, it doesn't make sense to buy any 875 until they're PCIExp ready.

So maybe I should lowball the MB for now. No problem, I'll just put the extra $$ into a actively cooled box. What do you think? Smile

Cheers,
Ang

Posted: Fri May 09, 2003 12:36 pm

Hmmm...Persario <Shudders> Very Happy

Posted: Fri May 09, 2003 7:16 pm

my rme sound card is built like a tank. thick pc card plastic. Fine German engineering....

and I have several in/out options on this, analog/toslink

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