Not only MSI's dual athalon but the new dual Xeon server board the MSI 680D ..rock solid looking server board with some serious oomph!! Not sure how readily available that one is either but the Asus A7M266-d is a slammin board indeed. You'll see me and another guy have been drooling over those two the last few days trying to make up our minds on which route to take...I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with the MSI board tho..I'd like to give that a whirl around the block!
The new threading procedure sounds cool..I for one hadnt read that yet..I dont do a lot of reading on the Intel or any hardware site so I rely on you guys to bring it up! lol
If you look over on the Nuendo forums tons of people have posted their results on Tyan and other boards whether good or bad..most seem to look like it's a pain in the ass to get that board going right!
The MSI has my attention for several reasons..
One: Intel Chipset!
Two: RDRAM support(4GB Worth!!)
Three: Built on SCSI U160
Four: Built on LAN
And a lot more as well!!

I'm seeing the Nvidia chipsets but infortuantely I havent heard any good news on it...who wants to be a guinea pig anyways! lol

Well...anyone want to throw some comments into the wind?
Opus

the nvidia guys are still learning. i could go into detail about all the different strategies they've come up with and revisions and garbage, but the bottom line is it's not worth it for anything we'd be applying to the platform.

as for the MSI, did you mean MSI 860D, rather than "680D"? that's all i saw, and it looked like it had everything you mentioned. either way, it seems like a sweet piece of hardware booty. my problem is the cost of intel is just too high for me.

i also won't be using scsi, so that's not really an attraction for me.

the biggest draw for me to the intel platform is the incredible bandwidth provided by it, rdram and all. having said that though, pc3000 ddr ram is out now, and it's got 3gb of bandwidth. so they're catching up in leaps and bounds.

tell you what, give it a couple of months, and when i've got my amd and you've got your intel, we'll compare benchmarks and prices, it'll be interesting :) .

also in the end, providing you know what you're doing, and if the computer can handle the applications and be stable, any system should be a good one.

frigid 'n disgusting

Oops...860D it is indeed...lol..damn dislexia
Yes, Intel is a little more expensive but it's worth it to me!
You are right that it definately makes all the difference when you know what you are doing in regards to building the machine!
I've built and reconfigured several machines so I know what it's like when you are first starting out building them...the newer technology in computer peripherals can sometimes bog you down when you dont realize the incompatabilities!!
Definately will have to do a bench mark test between my "hopefully" to be machine and yours!!
Opus

and my "hopefully" to be machine as well.

i wanted to have mine computer built by today, but the asus dual cpu motherboard i want isn't out yet, and there's no eta on it. not to mention there's three more types of DDR RAM out there now, PC2400, PC2700, and just announced PC3000. no speed difference, but they offer more bandwidth, and the capability to run on faster bus speeds than the standard 100/133 mhz for athlon platforms.

i know what you mean about peripherals and hardware though. since last year i've been reading about the new serial harddrives that are coming out. i wanted to wait for that before i bought the new computer, but we can't hold out any longer. not only the serial harddrives, but a few of the motherboards out there are equipped with one or two 66mhz, 64-bit PCI slots.

now maybe it's just me, but a 64-bit PCI slot seems like just the kind of thing audio soundcard manufacturer's have been waiting for, and after all that talk about what soundcards i should take a look at, i can't help but think that in a month or two i'll see a 64 bit card hit the market that takes advantage of this new PCI technology.

64-bit OS + 64-bit PCI slot + 64-bit soundcard = 1 happy DAW.

sitting in limbo,
c&u

One happy DAW? It's more like one happy DAW on crack on X-mas day and it's birthday!! lol!!
64 bit all around would rock sooooooo friggen hard!!!
DO you have any links to these Serial drives? This is nice man...it's good having someone who is more on top of the newer technology of computers to educate us lowly audio techs! :D
Let us know
Opus

i sure do. this is the best article i could find, although it's a bit outdated, it has more information than i've dug up anywhere else:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1174&p=1

god bless anandtech.

the most interesting thing to note from the article (in my opinion) is the fact that it was written in february 2000. along with the serial drive information, it talks about the USB 2.0 standard being developed.

as we know, thanks to NEC, USB 2.0 is already available on a number of motherboards, even though the actual USB 2.0 compatible devices are few and far between.

point being, they talked about USB 2.0, and Serial Harddrives. One is out, so the other should be popping up someday soon (i hope), even if it's only previews, and not available for our greedy consumption.

Hey Guys - I saw a "teaser" article (what's new blurb, not really an article) on the serial drives - it was in MaximumPC mag - their website is same name.com (maximumpc.com, I mean) and they have article archives, but since this was just a little teaser it probably isn't there. Anyway, the one I saw said probably mid-2002 or so, it's called Serial ATA, and the first drives are expected to be ATA150 if I remember right. Also said even faster fairly soon. I'm in the same boat, need new DAW now, not June. Oh, one other minor advantage - the new cables will already be round, so no more "cable rounding" crap... Cheers, and may the BSOD only happen to your enemies... Steve

excellent news! of course, i was forced to crack and buy my system already. i've already figured i'm only keeping it for about a year though, by then the pieces i REALLY want (like that 64 bit pci bus) will all be out.

anyway, due to time and money i was forced to go out and do the best i could with what i had. here's what i ended up with:

cpu: amd athlon xp 1600 w/coolermaster fan/sink
mb: abit kr7a-raid
ram: ddr pc2100 samsung (wanted pc2700 or pc3000)
hd: ibm deskstar 60gxp (61.5GB)
case: aopen 300W mid tower
vidcard: ati radeon ve
netcard: 3com 3c905c-tx-m
monitor: sony trinitron piddley 15"

and your standard amenities.. floppy, keyboard, cdrom etc.

total cost: $1150 canadian which is about $720 u.s.

there's probably more i can't think of right now, but the soundcard's on the way, and the system isn't slow. i'm already disappointed that i didn't get the dream system i wanted, but i realized that dream system was something that wasn't even out on the market yet.. and we need to start recording now. i'm already anticipating a new one by earlier than next year if my budget allows.

exit, stage down.

Just incase you are wondering about performance diferances between intel and amd mp processors... This is maby a bit old. (there are now alot newer amd processors available)

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1483&p=14

thanks for the link, i myself have read it, and virtually all the others on the site already, but hopefully someone else reading this thread will get a chance to check it out.

besides, we all know amd rules =)

thanks for the link, i myself have read it, and virtually all the others on the site already, but hopefully someone else reading this thread will get a chance to check it out.

besides, we all know amd rules.