Hi.

I have a Carillon audio PC which is about 4 years old. It is a Pentium 3.2gHz with 2GB of RAM.
I would like to get a new mother board, cpu and RAM.
My budget is £170 tops!
I'm considering these so far:-

Motherboards

ASRock 4Core1333 Glan/M £34.49 inc p&p
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.as...ore1333-GLAN/M

or

Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2 £54.55 inc p&p
http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/Mo...ProductID=2557

CPU

Intel E2160 1.8 Core 2 Duo £53.69 inc p&p
http://www.intel.com/design/intarch/pentium_dual-core/

or

Intel E4500 2.2 Core 2 Duo £69.78 inc p&p
http://processorfinder.intel.com/det...px?sspec=sla95

Memory

4GB DDR2 800 mhz RAM 2x2GB £42.98 inc p&p

My old mobo was an ASRock which has been rock solid with Cubase SX3.1 so am wondering if it would be best to stick with ASRock? I'm also thinking the ASRock might integrate with my other stuff better?

What would you advise within my £170 budget?

Many Thanks

why are you upgrading?

ALSO-watch thepower supply and video card...I looked at doing a mobo/cpu/RAM upgrade to mine of the same era--and would need also a new PS and video card. Making it too expensive an upgrade for me.

I'd also like to know why you think you need to upgrade.

I have a Nexus NX-4090 power supply which will be fine. Both the mother boards I mentioned have built in graphics cards.

I'm upgrading my old mobo because it can only take 2GB of the old DDR1 RAM and can't take multi core processors.

I would like to be able to run larger VSTi's and have more audio tracks with fx.

Well, it won't help with more tracks. More tracks will need more (and/or faster) HDs.

More FX...the CPU will definately do that. I'm just conastantly amazed that I could do full band mixes on a P3800/512mb (at 24/44.1) without rendering anything, and people seem to have issues with CPUs, in this case more than 4 times as fast.

VSTis...I hear you. Good luck. What "bigger ones" you wanting to run? VSL strings are the only thing I own that are RAM sucks. I hear people complain about BFD...but, if you look, it's using something like 250mb to buffer--which you've got to spare.

Anyway, for the price difference, I wouldn't hestiate to go 2.2ghz. The links don't work for the two mobos, but if they're got built in video, they would never be what I'd recommend. Does that built in video chip actually use a shared memory architecture...thereby robbing your RAM from Windows? The kinds of mobos they make with built in video are generally for generic computing...thus why your 3.2 p4 will only take 2gb and my 2.6 will take 4gb. You can read more about it here (this is the tech on the gigabyte, as an example) Intel GMA video

Come to think of it, let me know if you want to sell that 3.2 chip cheaply...in fact, maybe I should buy your chip AND RAM.

Hi. Thanks for the info!
I've just seen the E4600 2.4ghz cpu for £17 more than the E4500 2.2ghz. Would this be worth the extra £17?
I'll post the mobo link for the ASRock again to see if it will work?
ASRock 4Core 1333 GLAN/M
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4Core1333-GLAN/M&s=

The Gigabyte has the same onboard graphics and the ASRock.
Should I see a big difference in performance with the E4600 2.4ghz, 4GB DDR2 800mhz RAM and a better mobo compared to my old P4 3.2ghz, 2GB 400mhz DDR RAM and ASRock P4i65GV mobo (which also has onboard graphics).

Here's the link (hopefully) to my old mobo :-

ASRock P4i65GV
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=P4i65GV&s=478

quote:

Should I see a big difference in performance with...X

I wish I could simply answer that. On some level, sure, a new system will be faster...but, how much that translates into real world capability is more complicated.

My 2.6 P4 never goes over 30-40% running as many VSTis as I can get loaded into my RAM...that is the bottleneck in what I do. If I bought a new MacPro and kept 1.5gb (or 2 for that matter) I won't see any performance improvement. I mean, I will--the meter will sit on 5% instead of teetering around 30%...but, I won't be able to load more strings.

If you're working at 96k and "running out of tracks"...the HD is likely the bottleneck.

But, if all the tracks play back, but you start adding a mix's worth of FX and the audio engine starts dropping out--or you're running some VSTi that's actually synthesizing sounds rather than playing back samples alone...it's likely a CPU bottleneck (although, truth be told plug in efficiency isn't CLOSE to equal-I often think people spend more money in CPU cycle cost to run "free" plug ins than they would investing in plugs that are more efficient)...

I think you almost ALWAYS see a day to day difference with an actual video card. Even a cheap one...you can get a decent, fanless VGA card for $25 online if all you care about is using it as a DAW.

the links do work now. FYI.

What sample rate do you record at? How many reverbs are typical in a mix for you?

Hi. Thanks for the info. I'm recording at 44.1k at the moment but am looking to go 96k in the future.
I am looking at getting True Pianos this week and Roel recommends a dual core cpu for True Pianos 2.0 when it is released.
Nearly all the instrumental stuff I do uses VSTi's :-
True Pianos (when I get it)
EzDrummer + Latin Percussion EZX
Many Bass
Many Guitar
Sampletank 2.5 XL
Steinberg Virtual Guitarist
Garritan Personal Orchestra
Mr Ray mk2
VB3

I quite often use all of these for one song!

My audio is mainly vocals but can quite often have 10+ of these! I do a lot of gospel stuff and layer up lots of vocals for the choir.

I guessing I could get a different graphics card at some point and not use the one built in?

quote:

I think you almost ALWAYS see a day to day difference with an actual video card. Even a cheap one...you can get a decent, fanless VGA card for $25 online if all you care about is using it as a DAW.

I used a 32 meg card for quite a long time and it did a fine job UNTIL I bought the SSL bundle and it rendered the card useless. I had to replace it that day and the smallest one I could find was a 128 meg. Do yourself a favor and only load what you need for the card to do its job(if it will let you), I did a custom install and it still loaded up a bunch of bullshit that I had to go back and try to get rid of.

You need a Mac.

And you won't go 96k for MANY years with that kind of synth load. For perspective, we're just starting to see actual 24bit samples. That Intel Dual Core won't boost you to 96k if you're upgrading to do more/smoother at 44.1. In fact, I was surprised at how I could bascially run about the same amount of plugs at 96k on the 2.6ghz as I ran at 44.1 on the 800mhz. That math doesn't work out right, but it was the real world test results.

That aside, yes, you'd see performance increase...because you're not using anything that's RAM intensive...or HD intensive. You're using mostly small sample and model based synths.

Eddie, FWIW...the "cheap" cards, I mentioned were budget line Radeons with 256mb onboard. Although, I don't begin to understand why you had a problem with a 32mb card...after loading some plug ins? What on earth does video memory have to do with DSP plug ins? You're saying, Matrox worked one day...then you install plug ins that need more video RAM and you have to upgrade?

Uh,,,,,being able to see them.I always run way behind because I find something that works and use it until it does'nt any more. It freaked me out when I opened the first instance of one of the SSL's and I got a black area of where the plug was supposed to be, and then it showed up! I could'nt drag a eq knob(or anything else for that matter) with anything close to precise. New card, problem gone. The plug looked pretty mundane, shows what I know

Wow...if you don't mind me asking...what was the old card?

I went down to look and see but I can't find it. Hell I might've thrown it away.

Hi guys. Thanks for the info and advice.

I've ended up getting the ASRock CORE4 1333 GLAN/M, Intel E4600 and 2x2GB DDR2 800mhz RAM.

Will let you know how I get on.