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anonymous 9 May 2006

Alrighty guys!

Iäve decided to bite the bullet and build a dedicated audio machine.

Specs so far:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (Socket 939)
Asus A8V-E SE VIA K8T890 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS3
Antec NeoHE 430W Modular ATX2.0 PSU

And my Edirol USB interface.

Now, my friend designed this machine for me and recommended a
PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI
GFX card.

Now, this is 100% audio, he's a gamer.

is this card Overkill for what i wanna do (running nuendo, 90% audio work, i.e, very little realtime midi processing).

he then said to me

"Kieran88 says:
ive got an x300 here that has a DVI and VGA output"

which he is willing to give to me for free.

Now, how much does the GFX card play in the role of processing power of a DAW and more to the point, would this card suffice?

Cheers!

Tags

Comments

cfaalm Wed, 05/10/2006 - 05:34

Yes, the X800 is overkill. An X300 will suffice. I wouldn't buy a high end card because most high end cards have fan-cooling instead of passive cooling. You can do without the noise and perhaps additional case cooling. Further they draw more power, which could up the the need on your PSU, which would drive up costs both in use and purchase. I have some el cheapo Gigabyte nVIDIA 6200 in my DAW. Works like a charm.

I didn't know the VIA K8T890 supports AMDs X2. Is that finally done?

I have the Antec NeoHE 430W in my P150 case included. It is a fine PSU. I especially like the modularity, plus it's really quiet.

I see no HDDs in your specs.

anonymous Wed, 05/10/2006 - 07:20

cfaalm wrote: Yes, the X800 is overkill. An X300 will suffice. I wouldn't buy a high end card because most high end cards have fan-cooling instead of passive cooling. You can do without the noise and perhaps additional case cooling. Further they draw more power, which could up the the need on your PSU, which would drive up costs both in use and purchase. I have some el cheapo Gigabyte nVIDIA 6200 in my DAW. Works like a charm.

Brilliant! thank you!

cfaalm wrote: I didn't know the VIA K8T890 supports AMDs X2. Is that finally done?

These are the same MOBO/CPU/HD that my friend kieran built his PC with so i preusme so...

cfaalm wrote: I have the Antec NeoHE 430W in my P150 case included. It is a fine PSU. I especially like the modularity, plus it's really quiet.

Excellent! again, thank you!

cfaalm wrote: I see no HDDs in your specs.

I have like 5-6 HDD's here already, lol gonna format 2 of them!

anonymous Wed, 05/10/2006 - 07:30

Go with something on the low end that is passively cooled. (no fans) or has a very small temperature controlled fan.

The newer stuff like the x800 and 6600/6800 GT cards use big noisy blower fans that can also take up an empty PCI slot with the heat sink.

Check this X300. If it's a Hyper Memory model, make sure you set up the drivers to only use it's own built in memory. If you enable the Hyper Memory support, it will dip into your system RAM to get more memory when it needs to render special effects.

I've also found lots of good Geforce 6600LE's and GS's on the market that are geared toward the home theater pc builders...they are usually cooled with heatpipes and big passive sinks...they might work if you need graphics horsepower for anything.

cfaalm Sun, 05/14/2006 - 12:17

GavinMajesty wrote: How does the rest of the system look?

You mean my system?

Rockmachine

Antec P150 w/ NEO HE 430W
Gigabyte K8NF9 Ultra
AMD X2 3800+
2GB Twinx C2Corsair RAM
Gigabyte VGA GV-NX62TC256D8
1x WD250 GB SATAII
2x Maxtor 300GB SATAII
NEC ND-4551A
Apacer Cardreader 14-in-1 (no floppy)
2x Samsung TFT SyncMaster 710N

Front-end

Yamaha 01v96v2
Yamaha i88x
all connected with mLAN

DAW-software

Cubase SX3

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