Well....what's your system specs? RAID will help a "tiny" bit but it's really dependent on what else ya got going and the drives you use as well.
I can get over 45 tracks no problem on my system with the internal IDE...
list your system specs..
Opus

currently:
PIII 866
MSI 694 D mobo
seagate baracuda IV 40 gig[recording HDD]
3 other HDD's, 1 for os, 1 for samples, swapfile, 1 for games os.
512 MB pc 133
Matrox G200
creamware lunaII + ex + A16 ultra
win xp [ntfs]
logic 5.5

curently gets around 45 tracks @ 24/44.1

thinking of new system, thats why the raid question.
e7205 chipset[asus mobo]
at least 1 gig of 266ddr
cpu 2.66 or faster
onboard raid

With that system going RAID is not going to double your track counts in any way. To be honest I find it hard to believe you can do that many tracks with a PIII 866!! :eek:
Are they contiguos files or combination of MIDI and audio? How many plug ins?
Anyhue...if you want to double the track counts or plug ins you need more horsepower...
If I were you I would get the 845PE chipset with DDR 333 and a Hyper Threading CPU...with that combination you will indeed double your performance...than again stepping up from what you have now to that will probably blow you away!
Cheers
Opus

As i mentioned, the raid question was really reguarding a new system, as onboard raid is common these days.
I can get 45 tracks 24/44.1 with no plugs.
32 tracks contigeous, the folowing tracks accessing diferent areas of larger audio files to try and replicate real world situation with playback.
It is the HDD meter in logic that peaks [and halts playback] at this and not the cpu meter.

Generally tho on an actual mix i am getting 20-30 tracks with plugs[or less with heaps of plugs and vst inst's] it is the cpu meter that redlines, causing the asio driver stop playback.
I didnt think cpu was so important to track count.
My performance increased a lot when i went from win98/Me TO WIN xp.[creamware lunaII]
I have tried a 2gig[crappy HP server]with my hard/software, and it flew cpu wise but I didnt check track count.
I need to be able to get about 80-90 24 bit tracks out of daw.
I have long term borrow of 10,00 rpm ultra 160 scsi and top scsi card, but i still only get around 45 tracks, and it's noisy and hot!
Considering I am going to update computer in the next 2 months, which path would you recomend.
Also which do you think is the better option below:
1.ASUS P4PE ultra, P4 2.53G cpu, 1gig ddr333.
2.ASUS P4G8X/Delux P4 2.53G cpu, 1gig dr266 [dual chanell ddr]
Video card will be matrox G550. HDD options not decided yet.
*Does dual ddr266 beat single ddr333 for FPU and SSE2 calcs, which seem to be the important ones?
*Do you think the E7205 chipset will support ddr333 unoficially or officially at a later date?
*Will SATA make a difference in track count?
*Will ATA133 get greater track count than AT100?
*Would it be better to forget raid and spend money on 3.06 cpu.?
*Does Hyperthreading make a difference with audio applications?

Regards
Maak Bow

I figured you must not be using any plugs on getting that many tracks on that old system..on my old PIII 650 I could get 24 tracks with some plug ins and that was about it really..
Raid is not going to double your track count in any situation. It only makes you use a hard drive differently and eat up some PCI bandwidth at the same time.
Personally I would go for the P4PE since it does support DDR 333 which helps with synchronous activity with the CPU. SCSI is fast but very noisy indeed..also you need to drop the throughput of the SCSI card anyways down to 20M/B throughput total as to not soak up all the PCI bandwidth.
No, Granite bay will never support DDR 333 so the performance difference isn't going to be that great compared to the 845PE non Dual Channel DDR.
All software applications that utilize Dual processor support will utilize Hyper Threading support. Also you need Windows XP Pro(you can use home but it's better to use Pro since it "officially" supports dual processors and that's what Hyper Threading emulates) and nothing else to use Hyper Threading...Windows 2000 will not support it.
There is only a very slight difference between ATA100 and ATA133...I've gone over this before so you can do some searching and find those answers. Basically theres a possibly 5% performance gain..remember..I said possible as it's only speed bursts up to 133 and not constant throughput at 133.
SATA is still in the early phase development...I would wait for the later phase...which is around 2004 and that will truly bring out some good specs...but also remember that it would be better to wait for the newer Intel chipsets and the new PCI protocol...3GIO or PCI Express.
With my system...the P4PE and a 2.66Ghz CPU I can get tons of tracks with plenty o plugins..
Buddy o mine running a 400Mhz FSB P4 2.0Ghz system with SCSI drives is getting over 150 tracks...He's the engineer at the Universal Music Production Group here in Santa Monica...I know plenty o people running 80+ tracks on IDE as well.
I haven't reached that track count since I really don't need that many...I mean..what type of music requires that many friggen tracks?!! lmao!
Film and Post Production...yes...music...no!!
HTH
Opus

Opus
Thanks for all the info.
To clarify 1 last thing though,
Can i expect a greater track count on a new system? [system as sugested below]

If not, how DO I get 80-90 tracks?....
[forget the 'music doesnt need it' arguement]

MAAK

Oh yes...the new system will definitely be able to get you those track counts very easily!! Very very easily!!
Opus :D