Intel lists their 925 chipset as their performance chipset, and the 915 as their mainstream chipset.

If you are able to afford the very latest DDR2 ram sticks that 925 supports, go for it...I'm sure you'll be building a vey high-level screamer.

If you intend to use the older, more affordable standard DDR-design ram I believe you have no choice but to use 915...I think only DDR2 is supported under 925.

Thanks for the reply moonz. DDR2 is a bit more expensive, but it seems like the chipset has a lot of potential. I've read that the 925XE chipset with DDR2-667 ram has a bus speed of up to 1066(with FSB at 280. Some have forced it to 300!!) Yeah, it would be a screamer, but I've read some negative things, too(heat....). Some people on this site have had problems using mbox hardware with the 915 chipset. I had a painful install with 845g, so I'm feeling a little gun shy. The extra speed will come in handy, but if my soundcard(emu 1820) doesn't work, what good is it? I'm torn between building a screamer or something that's stable..........

Yah...I know what you mean.

My music computer is a Northwood Pentium 4 (3 gig), running on an ASUS P4P800-VM, with the Intel 865G chipset....it runs a bit warm, but nothing to worry about,

I have been agonizing about whether or not to upgrade to a socket 775 Pentium 4, and get a mainboard with an Intel 9xx series chipset, but I too have been reading about all the heat related problems with Intel's faster stuff, and that has made me put off stepping up.

I'm not familiar with chipset-related heat issues, but I know that the prescott cpus are pretty power-hungry devils...once they get up to about 3.4-3.6 gigs they are consuming about 100 watts or more...that much power consumption just produces a whole lot of heat.

I don't think there is an answer to the cpu heat problem until they can shrink down the cpu components somemore...smaller diodes and transistors take less power, and will produce less heat.

Another round of VLSI should cure the problem for Intel cpus...it has in the past, anyway.

In the meantime I guess I'm stayin right at 3 gigs.

:(

I´m not very into the theme "what works with what" but one thing i can tell : the 925 chipset has lots of potecial in theory, but i don´t advise you to up-grade your system now. what a bit longer. there are still some issues to solve with drivers e software to work at 100% . But i´m not an expert.

Thanks for the replies. I suppose part of my problem is that I'm trying to build an all-purpose machine. If it were just a DAW it would be a little easier to stick with the tried and true. It seems like the wife is always on the CPU the rare times a get a chance to record. The sooner I build one, the better.

I've been searching the web and have found one person who purchased a dell? with the 925x chipset with the emu 1820. They had a lot of clipping and popping, until they disabled the onboard SATA controller and installed an aftermarket brand. Problem solved. Well, the good news is that it the combo can be forced to work(At least in one case). The bad news is that the chipset/soundcard have given at least one person a lot of pain. Chipset issue? MOBO? EMU? who knows....

There's still that nagging voice in the back of my head that says that PCI-E is going to rock......... Or is that just my wife?

I'm currently using dual 120gig Hitachi SATA drives with my ASUS P4P800/Intel 865G motherboard, and I am not experiencing any popping and clipping whatsoever...this is certainly the first and only time I've ever heard of anyone claiming a SATA controller causing trouble with audio recording/playback.

Popping and clipping is often related to the soundcard driver, so if the E-mu drivers are at fault you should be seeing people complaining about this, no matter that motherboard-chipset combo is being used.

There are numerous other more common things that cause popping...trouble arising from a SATA controller incompatibility would seem to be very unusual, however, I won't say it is not possible.

PCI express is no doubt an advance...whether or not it is worth the cost required to build a fully implemented PCI express system depends entirely on your willingness to spend the bucks.

You can buy all the very latest equipment to build a top performing PC, but that PC will only be a top performer for about 3 months...by that time there will be even newer, better performing equipment on the market, and, in order to stay at the top in performance for the next 3 months, you'll need to upgrade yet again.

It has been my experience that the PC has made a fairly competent DAW machine since the P3 days, so, about any decent P4 setup should be good, if all the PC parts used are top-quality, and well-considered.

But, of course, faster is always better for making music on a computer...especially if you use virtual instruments and FX.

:D

A friend of mine is using the ASUS P4C800-E/875P chipset with the EMU. It's a pretty solid setup. Like any system, he bogs down with a lot of virtual instruments or effects. I'm stuck using guitar rig a bit, and like him, I get bogged down. (It's a processor hog, but It's great when you have volume restrictions) It would be nice to force an extra track or two with a newer chipset.

I thought that an SATA controller issue was a little out of the ordinary as well. I'd guess he had some other conflict that he inadvertently resolved when he placed the new controller. I'm no expert, regardless. I had clipping and popping, and eventual total meltdown with my gigabyte 845g/Emu. The final solution was flashing my BIOS. It could have been something else, but the BIOS flash is what made the system fully functional.

Your quote about CPU parts being "well considered" is great advice. I learned my lesson with "bargain" components the hard way. You spend more time messing around with them than you do using them. Even some of the "good" ones have issues. It's the whole reason I posted my initial question. Just fishing to see if any one else had any luck. It's no fun being the guinea pig.

I know what you mean about wanting to upgrade every three months. I'm starting to lean towards the 925 chipset so I'm only three months behind, as opposed to six. As far as price goes, It seems about the same price as an 800's chipset. Only big difference I found was in the ddr2 memory. There's someone on pricewatch.com advertising 512M of ddr2 -675 for $134. If the price is right, that's only about 10 bucks more than top notch DDR. The ASUS MOBO is a bit more expensive, but you can pic up the ABIT board for about 160. I had great luck with ABIT's bx chipset long ago, and haven't read too many negatives. If its about the same price, I just might roll the dice...........