I currently am running an AMD with good success. If I were to upgrade at this point though, I would probably go the Intel route. Currently in the speed wars Intel is winning the speed/price wars. Most people will agree though, whichever route you go, it is best to build your own for a DAW. Aside from the processor speed, the mother board is a key component. Although you may be getting a good processor, you are not being gauranteed that you have a good mother board that it's running on, when you're relying on someone else building your DAW. The hard drive and it's speed is another factor you need to look at and the obvious the amount of RAM. Learning how to "roll your own" is the key to getting an optimal DAW, that way you get to put the best parts available throughout the system. Remember a DAW is only as good as it's weakest link.

PLEASE BUILD YOUR OWN!

it is simple and worth it.

This is coming from someone who now has his A+ cert, when 2 years ago he bought a PC from HP (when I knew nothing), and tho it runs very well now (1.7 ghz p4) He paid out the a$$ for it!!

BUILD YOUR OWN!!!!!

never use best buy, circuit city, any of those...

Arnar,

Carillon builds DAW's. They have a web site at http://www.carillonusa.com. Take a look at what they are building and consider building you own. They make several models and specify many of the components including motherboards, processors, memory, hard drives, etc. You can probably get everything you need from a place like newegg.com.

Good Luck,
Greg

AMD for performance, Intel for stability.

AMD for stability Intel for Performance.

This is a pointless debate. Both processors can do equally well. The importance lies with the components around the processors.

If you don't know what you're doing, someone like Carillon is a good bet.

I built my own AMD machine around an N-Force2 platform and it's solid as a rock.

ya, for a while I think that AMD was really on top (in the days of the early p4 processers..) let me tell you, I have a 1.3 ghz athlon that kicks a p4 1.6's A$$!!!! (although the athlon runs very very hot) --- really it was a give and take.

but after the northwood p4 1.7, I think intel straightened out... not totally sure, but they are pretty much both the same now, except for the different instruction sets, which most programs optomize for BOTH anyway...

I have heard that AMDs 3Dnow! technology iz better for audio than SSE2 (intel's instruction sets) tho... but when waves plugs optomized for SSE2, I had an immense performance gain. Again, we aree left with the same old answer... they are basically the same.

I think it is getting to the point where the processor speeds are fast enough that it does not matter (that much) anymore. I have a PIII 700mHZ at home running Vegas with 256 mg RAM. It works fine for a home studio. I have a P III 1ghz at my project studio with 256 mg RAM. And I did an album for a nine piece Funk band with tons of effects. I now have dual AMD Athlon MP 1800 with 512 mg RAM, and I can't get the thing to hicuup at all. I am sure there is a difference, but to the above average user, you can make any processor work. I will say that for project studios where the computer is in the same room as the mic, dual processors suck because there is a ton of fan noise. Athlons run hotter so they usually have more fans than an Intel. My Dell PIII mini-tower is so quiet you can barely tell it is running. My dual Athlon sounds like a barn fan.

My 2 cents.

Al

yeah, I built a seperate room for my computer and ran the cables through the wall! ahh, complete silence.

Jason

Yeah, I moved mine into the vocal booth, and now my control room is very peaceful for mixing, but it's a bit of a pain everytime I need to access my floppy drive. Now I just can't figure out why I get this whirly sound everytime I record vocals?

:-)

*barn fan*

lol

If I was to move my Athlon to another room; the only adjacent rooms are the living room and the washroom.
Mind you, if I put it in the washroom, I'd have a good explanation if someone told me my Acid project sounded like sh!t. :)

Actually, that's the only drawback I found. I needed 3 fans to keep my T-Bird happy. That does cause extra noise. Very reliable though.

M

I did the true audio engineering solution to making the Athlon fan quiet. I placed a microphone infront of it, routed the signal through my mixing board, reversed the phase 180 degrees, and then played it back out a speaker located directly infront of the fans. Subtracted noise cancellation....it works in luxary cars, why not on my PC?

Red, maybe you remember this story from awhile ago. They were testing car sounds in econo boxes and using strategically placed mics and speakers they could actually make that car sound like a Lotus, Ferrari, etc.
They were using wave manipulation I guess. Is that what you're describing with the Athlon? If so, what would I need to make my 850 T-Bird sound like a dual 2800+??

M

LOL, actually I've heard of that one too. Unfortanately though to upgrade your single Athlon to be more like a dual, you could use the above method, but only not invert the phase, this way you would get additive noise instead of subtractive and sound just like that dual Athlon.

Actually, what I was referring to in luxary vehicles. They are placing microphones and speakers throughout the vehicle and then inverting the phase and pumping the sound back out the speakers, and it subtractively cancels the road noise and such to give a much more quiet ride. The company I work for actually at one time developed a muffler that would do a similar type of thing. They made a muffler with a microphone, amplifier, and a large woofer. I haven't seen it, but I heard it exists, I guess it really never made it past the prototype stage. LOL!!

"They made a muffler with a microphone, amplifier, and a large woofer. I haven't seen it, but I heard it exists"
I think you're talking about my next door neighbour's car! ;)

M

I have a new athlon chip and it runs very cool compared to the 1400 mhz I had used previously.
There is no need for case fans, on the cpu I run a low rpm silent fan with heatpipe, enermax psu, so now it is the harddisks that are the noisiest item



AMD/Intel? All I know is my KT400 system with a tweaked WINXP is working flawlessly. so it can be done either way

I gotta say, my new Athlon XP 2400+ runs dead cool and quiet with a small fan!