@hetoreyn said:

Hey Eric ... I'm also a Mac Guy .. hehe .. but I use a PC too so I guess I can comment.

The system spec you say sounds pretty good. Though I don't know too much about the Core II duos .. so I'd say for that price yeah .. not a bad deal at all. 3 gig of RAM should certainly do you fine. I'd just say research the Main board a little. Make sure it's a good one.

One problem of less expensive machines is that the manufactures tend to cheap out by giving you a main board with serious bottle necks inside them. Fine for browsing the net or writing an e-mail .. but a real pig for gaming, or music making.

Not to say that that board is one of those .. but this is something to be wary of. Otherwise it looks good. Beats my PC anyways [:P] (AMD 3200 XP ... that has to run at 2500 cos it gets too hot! .. PC's are soooo lame, but a necessary Evil. I need mine to run Oblvion and GTA 4).

Hmmm.. I wonder what other options I have for main boards. The guy who is selling this to me isn't a musician but claims to have assembled "a few" DAW in the past. I'd definitely up my budget a bit if I knew this particular Intel board was crap for DAW.

in fact i've been considering to use this (or a similar intel board) for a new machine - http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DQ965GF/index.htm - 8 GB RAM, 6 sATA, 10 USB, PCIe + PCI classic (important for using legacy soundcards) ... the only thing i've been thinking about if it is clever to use a MOBO with an onboard grafic (although this one seems to be great) because of the shared memory.

finally i'm tending to get one without onboard grafic and am still searching for a model holding 16 GB, possibly with firewire on board
christian

Im building a system my self and have opted for ASUS P5B Deluxe. Which is a bit more expensive board.

I would suggest a third drive for the OS, keeping Apps off the system drive is often a good idea with Microsoft.

Also, consider a video card, a video card with its own RAM lightens the load on the system ram.

I have the same CPU as you...so that is fine [:)]

Also you can go much higher then 3 GB of RAM if you want... If you use a 64 bit OS you can go up to 8 GB (4x2 GB)


All in all, for what you say you are doing it seems ok...

hi cm
well 16 gb as 4x4 gb ram is a very expenssive solution - and none of the
Lga 775 mobos has more than 4 slots since they all use non-buffered
memory.

Is there any reason why you don't wan't to consider a server board with
fb ram?
I would like to know cause I'm considering building a server
based on a supermicro server board.

@Eric said:

I am almost ready to pull the trigger on this. More opinions would be appreciated. Please chime in if you think I am making the wrong decision.

I think you could cut down the processor to a E6300, and in turn upgrade
to 4 gb ram - with the 3gb switch, that gives you room for an extra 6-7000 samples. And the E6300 will gladly run a large number of VI's.

kcorbin, i've been a big fan of asus boards over more than 10 years now, but lately i had to notice a few issues, obviously related to their quality control ... and their new boards seem more to aim gamers and oveclockers than just performance hungry power users.

sapkiller, i'm looking for a board holding more than 8 GB because the route is clear: as soon as we get 64bit support on all levels we will look contemptuously on boards with 8 GB and no upgrade path and it will turn up as bad investment.
the supermicro's can hold at least 16 GB - and they don't need too much space [;)]
christian

hi Cm
yes indeed - but why not look for serverboards?
As long as the 4gb sticks are so expensive and there's still no way to
increase the number slots for unbuffered ram.
It seems that fb dimms is the way to go.

I myself are looking to build a dual quadcore XEON on a SuperMicro
with 16 ram slots ( max memory of 64 gb )
I'll just start of with a single quad CPU and 4x2gb and then expand
from there.

With this setup you don't have to trow away ram, cpu when you upgrade -
you just add a second CPU and some more 2gb ram sticks

agreed ... there is only one thing that leaves me undecided ... ok, two things:
- what _exactly_ is the difference between the 5000P and the 5000X chipset
- all boards with 16 slots for RAM-sticks have only one PCI/PCIe slot (unless i go for 2 HE)
christian

ps: we ran a few tests on a 6015 with 2 woodcrest 3,2 GHz - blowing you away ...

This is the one I have in mind:

SUPERMICRO X7DBE+
3 x PCI-X / 3 x PCI-Express / 16 x DDR2-RAM

You're right about the different versions 5000p, v and x
A direct comparison reveals that the differ in exactly... no way [[;)]]

The only thing I know is that the X is intended for workstations
and that I vaguely seem to remember someting about the
multi-cpu architecture and the way they access the ram, that differs on the server versions.

@cm said:

in fact i've been considering to use this (or a similar intel board) for a new machine - http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DQ965GF/index.htm - 8 GB RAM, 6 sATA, 10 USB, PCIe + PCI classic (important for using legacy soundcards) ... the only thing i've been thinking about if it is clever to use a MOBO with an onboard grafic (although this one seems to be great) because of the shared memory.

finally i'm tending to get one without onboard grafic and am still searching for a model holding 16 GB, possibly with firewire on board
christian

I don't get how you could utilize 8 gigs of ram on a 32 bit XP system. I thought 3 was the absolute max?

eric, it is 4 (resp almost 4 - 3,75 on most boards) and i just cited the specs.
i for myself would find 8 GB not enough building a machine which should serve some years ourdays.
christian

Just don't get Windows vista for your new machine .. that is a serious resource hog .. will take 512 MB or RAM just to sit Idle. XP is much more efficient on your system RAM . And certainly getting a dedicated graphics card instead of using the on board system is a good idea. Not that DAW's usually use much 3D rendering .. but certainly you want as much juice from the CPU and RAM as you can get.

My Mac could take 16 GB too in fact I've been wondering about how much it would cost to upgrade these days .. need PC-4200 RAM, anyone know how much a GIG costs these days.

@cm said:

i for myself would find 8 GB not enough

It's posts like this that make we wonder if I should even consider VI with my current computer situation.