Well, the Asus boards are backordered from ONE place in the states...the Aopen board which has the Granite Bay chip is not in stock at Newegg and who knows what's happening at this point.
Granite Bay will offer the DAW performance one needs since it will match the speed of RDRAM at that point. RDRAM is dual channel right now yes, but it's twice as expensive as DDR and that's why Granite Bay will benefit us in cost. Plus with the DDR PC3200 and upwards out there performance will be amazing with a 533Mhz FSB CPU! Plain and simple. Where Granite Bay is? No idea and that's why I just bought a P4PE with a 2.6Ghz CPU and 512 PC2700 DDR333 today! :D

Hey Opus,
report back on the p4pe when you get a chance... I would particularly like to know whether you feel it is adequate as far as speed is concerned. Also, how it compares in performance to the p4te and the p4t533-c...
get back good buddy... over under, roger roger...

Will do big buddy! 10-4..
What's your vector victor...we got clearance Clarence.. :D

I'd have to say this board/CPU/Memory combination is fast! WOW! Boot up time is 30seconds flat..load time for Cubase SX is fanominal! I did a quick export of a song I have...that flew by! Wasn't too many tracks but it was still a test!
Very nice I'd have to say!
It's a 2.66Ghz CPU(C1 Stepping none the less!) with 512 PC2700 DDR 333....Enermax 350Watt Variable Fan adjustable PSU...
I need to look into the cooling system some more and see what I can do to keep the water cold..I wonder if there's a chemical I can put into it that will help that? Either that or I fill it with fresh cold ice water every day! Sort of like watering the plants eh?! :p
Hope that helps
Opus

I need to look into the cooling system some more and see what I can do to keep the water cold..I wonder if there's a chemical I can put into it that will help that? Either that or I fill it with fresh cold ice water every day! Sort of like watering the plants eh?!

Gary...this is up my alley (I am a scientist by training)...

There is not a chemical that I know of that will keep the water cold. There are chemicals that will keep the water from freezing, such as PEG (poly ethylene glycol) which is the main ingredient in most types of antifreeze.

Depending on how much money you want to spend, you can get temperature-control recirculating water baths that you can set to specific temperatures. These units will have built-in temperature control, plus the peristoltic pump needed to circulate the H20. It will be easily possible to daisy-chain several computers together from one of these baths.

This one is pretty expensive (about $1700USD), but some of your high-paying customers might be interested, especially since they can hook up several computers at once to the same unit. This guy cools *and* heats, so there may be some cheaper that only cool, but I gave up searching after a while.

http://www.vwrsp.com/catalog/product/index.cgi?object_id=0000227

This company is VWR, but you can also try "Fisher Scientific", they sell similar products.

If you set the bath to O degress C you will need to add some PEG (antifreeze) to the water to keep it from freezing...

Jeez, James, ya wade thru acres of foam wid a guy and ya think ya know 'im - :=) never heard anybody else on this board refer to Van Waters and Rodgers, etc - I deal with this kind of stuff from time to time in my job too (industrial automation/control)

Now you know why I advocated piecemeal (incremental cut and try) placement when Fats was saying "just do it all" - (Schizen-tific method)

Hey, I downloaded ETF5 yesterday (just the demo), haven't gotten time to set anything up but it looks like a SUPER valuable tool for the stuff we all are trying to do, and reasonable too - $150 for the basic software, $225 more for the software extras, and $250 for their calibrated mic/pre, 20-20k within 2 dB, works for LF stuff with just your 'puter, the RS SPL meter and the basic software. Check it out here -

http://www.etfacoustic.com/

Some of the test files are too big to download, but the main proggie is like 5-6 megs, the demo becomes the proggie when you pay for activation code, or something - think after the holidaze I'll order the whole thing, maybe later (after I learn to tell one body orifice from another) I might look into shooting rooms for local people - just a laptop and small ditty bag (and a few years study, got that part already)and you're there...

Meantime, you and yours, and all here at RO - have a happy, a merry, and a safe Christmas season, and may santa bring you at least one fun new toy that has at least one place to plug an XLR into... Steve

Meantime, you and yours, and all here at RO - have a happy, a merry, and a safe Christmas season, and may santa bring you at least one fun new toy that has at least one place to plug an XLR into... Steve

Same to you ol' buddy! I was thinking about asking Santa for a brand new ANUS to plug that XLR into, but he might get the wrong idea!!! :D

Happy Holidays to all!!!

Hey James - if THAT's what yer gonna do with the connector, use a mini-plug - less pain...

Cheers Opus for your help. Looks like the P4PE is proving to be a very stable board for us DAW users.

How is the performance of Cubase SX compared to your previous system?

The Enermax PSU was one I was looking at, mainly because of its manual speed control. How quiet is it in your DAW?

The only other option I looked at was a 400 watt ultra quiet PSU from quietpc.com

And by the way - Merry Xmas and happy boxing day to all!

Have a good one

Ya know...I didn't ask Santa(well, I guess it would be Moses for us jews! :D
angrynote
Well, I tell ya...the system is very quiet. I don't hear the cooling system pump at all. Especially since I put the anti freeze in. It helps muffle the vibration of the pump. Which is nice. The Enermax fan is really quiet and as you see it can be controlled on the RPM side.
The stock fans are quiet too that came with the case..I can throw them into Turbo mode and at that point it's audible but then again my system for the moment is on the floor and not in the housing area in my desk.
I've overclocked it to 3.12GHhz at the present moment....man that thing screams and doesn't flinch at all. I set it to 3.2Ghz and it didn't boot properly...I think I may need to raise the core voltage just a little bit at that point.
Otherwise the performance of SX is amazing at that point!
Cheers...and go put some boxes away(Boxing day!!!)
Opus :D

What is a "stepping" cpu?

Boxing Day is traditionally a great day for looking at all the knitted sweaters and oversized socks you got 'coz no-one understood what you meant when you asked for a "533mhz P4 0.13 micron" and some family members even thought a "motherboard" was an old Star Trek episode.

That's what you get for asking!
So I guess I'll be spending my own money in 2003!!!

Just in case I don't post b4 the New Year, have a good one!

PS - Here's to another great year of recording.org and thanks to all the help and good advice (except the anti-freeze stuff that goes straight over my head!?!)

flatrock
There are locked and unlocked CPU's for overclocking which enables you to step the frequency voltage bit by bit...the locked ones only allow you to do large increments which doesn't bode well on certain frequency settings. At least that's what I've gathered from reading many of the [H]ard forums.
Do ou guys know what Boxing day actually is? It's the day after x-mas where the cargo sites typically offload the boxes from the ships to the warehouse.....silly isn't it?!! What does that actually have to do with Jesus?
Here's another question? What does the X-mas tree stand for? Is that another add on to the holiday such as Santa Claus? I mean, St Nicholos wasn't actually a saint IMHO! Fat old man creeping around the neighborhood flying(on angel dust most likely) distributing coal? :D

So stepping would be advantageous if I were planning to OC.
I tried to convince my wife that the tree was a pagan symbol of nature worshipping idolatry. Her point was that Santa had to have a place for presents. Having no children at home, I argued that there would be no presents from Santa. In the end I drug the fake tree up from the basement, plugged it in, and proceded to hang my balls on it, while consuming massive quantities of Jim Beam and Pepsi One. Aaaaahhhh what a season.

The "stepping" refers to the revision of the "core" of the CPU chip at the time of fabrication(not the incremental FSB stepping included in the BIOS's of some enthusiast motherboards). As Intel or AMD refine a chip, they may make minor revisions to the chip core that enhance the chips ability to perform, stay cool and ultimately reach higher clock speeds. So a P4 made 12/01/02 may have a revised core compared to a P4 made 01/01/02. Core steppings are marked on the chip(along with date and place of fabrication). Geeks who overclock thier chips track the performance abilities of the different core steppings, some websites actually corealate contributed information by users to establish a database whereby one can tell by the markings on the chip, how well that chip might overclock. Even the fabrication plant is printed on the chip, (some people have felt chips made in Malay were superior to ones made in Costa Rica, put that was always controversial).
I don't believe overclocking a chip is advisable to any professional application unless you can get all system peripherals to run syncronously(as opposed to asyncrounously), and there is plenty of breathing room in the current stepping of the chip being pushed. Otherwise loss of data and instability can occur. Not really what you want when you thought you were tracking a "golden" performance.
I happen to like overclocking and fiddling with performance settings for the knowledge and thrill of it, but when it comes down to business, you want rock solid stability.
So my advice is to push your systems only as far as they will run rock solid, otherwise save your cash up to buy the performance you think you may need.
I meant to bring this up a long time ago, but we were all having so much fun. :w:
Tommy P.

Did someone say "OVERCLOCKING"? :D
As OPUS said, the "stepping" of a processor can be very important to the overclocking enthusiast. Without a CPU that can handle it, all of the other work that you do to your system to enable a higher, stable overclock is going to be useless. Unfortunately, if you order your CPU on-line, you're stuck with whatever "stepping" that they send you. Very seldom will the on-line retailer advertise the "stepping", nor will they check it for you before you buy it from them.

Ahhh...thank you Tommy! The one area that I am still a novice in..Overclocking...
I'm still learning new things about it and just hoe far you can push a system...I am finding that a C1 stepping is a lot easier to OC though! Especially from the [H]ard forum readings that I do occasionally...sometimes my head spins trying to digest what most of the smart ones say over there.....
Anyhue...There are a couple of places that do say C1 on the list...I found a couple of links form the [H]ard forums...you might want to check that out if you truly want one or not.
I guess I got lucky buying mine from a computer expo!
Cheers
Opus