st00ts Posted June 9, 2001 Share Posted June 9, 2001 what's the word about how these two processors compare in the field of sound recording and editing? I have heard that in some aspects even the "slower" athlons perform better than the pentiums. Does this hold true in sound? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anderton Posted June 9, 2001 Share Posted June 9, 2001 I've been told that Athlons work fine for music, because they have good floating point math capabilities. Older AMD chips, and the Cyrix chips, do not. Make sure you get the right kind of motherboard. There are some interesting comments on this in the thread about getting Cubase and Athlon-based computers to work together. Craig Anderton Educational site: http://www.craiganderton.org Music: http://www.youtube.com/thecraiganderton Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/craig_anderton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alndln Posted June 10, 2001 Share Posted June 10, 2001 Iv'e built 3 Athlon systems and speak from experience.The Athlon at the moment will slightly out perform the P3 in the Fpu dept. which means it will handle more plugins(a little more) ect.and cost less.Which ever way you go do not buy an off the shelf PC(ie: Gateway,H.P. ect.).Either build(easy) or have one built starting with an Asus Mainboard,Micron Ram(Athlons are picky about generic ram),IBM or Western Digital HD's,quality power supply(Antec is fine,300 watt at least)and you'll be fine which ever way you go.At the moment the Asus A7va(motherboard) with the Via chipset is the most mature.The Amd 760 seems to be getting solid as well and I'm personally waiting for Asus to come out with a dual Athlon Mobo based on a hopefully more mature Ali/Majik chipset. "A Robot Playing Trumpet Blows" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duhduh Posted June 10, 2001 Share Posted June 10, 2001 He is exactly right. "Meat is the only thing you need beside beer! Big hunks of meat and BEER!!...Lots of freakin' BEER." "Hey, I'm not Jesus Christ, I can't turn water into wine. The best I can do is turn beer into urine." Zakk Wylde http://www.hepcnet.net/bbssmilies/super.gif http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/15_1_109.gif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D.Triny Posted June 10, 2001 Share Posted June 10, 2001 Originally posted by st00ts: what's the word about how these two processors compare in the field of sound recording and editing? I have heard that in some aspects even the "slower" athlons perform better than the pentiums. Does this hold true in sound? there's an on going benchmark using a SONAR project to compare/contrast the relative performance of Pentium, Athlon and in one case P4 (so far the P4 performs horribly) it's at http://www.themindclub.com/sonartest.jpg Scott Reams is the keeper of the stats... -david abraham This message has been edited by David Abraham Fenton on 06-10-2001 at 04:31 PM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st00ts Posted June 11, 2001 Author Share Posted June 11, 2001 Thanks, nothing like good hard statistics. I've heard that even the 1.3 ghz athlons outperform the 1.7 ghz pentiums in some applications, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in the SONAR tests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alndln Posted June 11, 2001 Share Posted June 11, 2001 The biggest difference between the 2 is how it affects your wallet,unless you don't mind contributing $$$ towards Intels marketing campaign.Intel are supposedly attemting to encourage software companies to optomize their software for the P4 (with $$$).When I first got an older K6-2 system I was worried about software/hardware compatibilities,but since there were absolutely no problems other than a weak floating point unit I upgraded to an Athlon with no fears,the early Via chipset however had some problems and things to work out.Makes me kind of wonder what the software companies actually do after Intel supposedly greases their palms,probably slap each other 5 and go home to their Athlon systems. "A Robot Playing Trumpet Blows" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Master Zap Posted June 11, 2001 Share Posted June 11, 2001 By using a thermometer you can easily distinguis which one of the two has the warmer sound http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif /Z Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D.Triny Posted June 11, 2001 Share Posted June 11, 2001 Originally posted by st00ts: Thanks, nothing like good hard statistics. I've heard that even the 1.3 ghz athlons outperform the 1.7 ghz pentiums in some applications, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in the SONAR tests. right, plus now we have the Athlon 1.4 processer shipping and soon the enhanced Athlon 4/Palomino version which should start shipping in the third quarter. Now that Microsoft is natively supporting the Athlon chipsets it's getting harder and harder to argue against Athlon (I'm a recent convert http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif ) -david abraham This message has been edited by David Abraham Fenton on 06-11-2001 at 04:26 PM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stratman_dup1 Posted June 12, 2001 Share Posted June 12, 2001 Just remembet that A LOT of soundcards are not compatible with AMD Athlons, many of the popular soundcards out right now will not work with them. Be absolutely sure that any sound card you want to buy is compatible first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D.Triny Posted June 12, 2001 Share Posted June 12, 2001 Originally posted by Stratman: Just remembet that A LOT of soundcards are not compatible with AMD Athlons, many of the popular soundcards out right now will not work with them. Be absolutely sure that any sound card you want to buy is compatible first. not sure how true that is anymore. All the Echo cards, M-Audio, Soundscape, Sblive, Frontier Design and MOTU cards seem to be running fine on the latest Athlon chipsets -david abraham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alndln Posted June 12, 2001 Share Posted June 12, 2001 Sound card incompatibility W/Amd is pretty much a non issue by now.The last 2 were Echo and Aark which now work fine.The chipset was alway's the issue,not the chip itself which card manufacturers stated themselves. "A Robot Playing Trumpet Blows" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
demtation Posted November 4, 2001 Share Posted November 4, 2001 This is an older thread, but I just had to wipe the drool off my chin long enough to share details about my latest hand-rolled DAW. After a tragic power failure during a bios update (UPS anyone?) I took the opportunity to upgrade a couple components... Following the recommendation at Prorec.com, I went with the Iwill KK266plus mobo and paired it with an Athlon XP1700 (1.44ghz) and 640mb PC133 and my first dabble with WindowsXP and I just can't believe the thing. It was my first experience in which (most)everything worked the first time, and after fine-tuning some bios settings, the formerly boring beige box has this sense of restrained power that I find almost unsettling. I know the benchmark programs don't represent real-world use, but my theoretical track count jumped up about 20% under this configuration. For anyone interested, the Athlon XPs are where it's at, at least when paired with a mature KT133 platform. So far (1 week) stability has been 100%... Anyway, I didn't have too much of a point with this post except that we are blessed to be doing what we do at this point in history. I remember my father almost ten years ago paying over $1k for a 1gb drive so we could finaly store an unprecedented CD's worth of material, and even a couple alternate mixes on one drive! We've come a long way! Dem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lovesinger Posted November 4, 2001 Share Posted November 4, 2001 Originally posted by demtation: I didn't have too much of a point with this post except that we are blessed to be doing what we do at this point in historyBlessed indeed! And your post gave MUCH helpful info. As I prepare to order an Alesis HD24 (the Fostex VF16 I had sounded great but was too clumsy to produce with fluidly) I'd like to kmow if the 900 MHz Athlon is OK now also. I'm considering one as a side-car for editing and various other, and Fry's has it in an ATX bare bones system (case, PS, VIA KL133 mobo) at $139 now. -- Music has miracle potential -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven dunston Posted November 4, 2001 Share Posted November 4, 2001 I'm having a great time with my Athlon 1.4ghz, Win2000 and SONAR 1.31. If you have the proper cooling and power supply, an Athlon is the best choice for a DAW CPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gtrmac Posted November 5, 2001 Share Posted November 5, 2001 I've been using PIII's with Asus CUSL2's and TUSL2's but since the P4 is looking so bad I'm ready to start checking out some AMD stuff now. I've been interested in the Athlon and Asus A7M266 combination for instsnce. Mac Bowne G-Clef Acoustics Ltd. Osaka, Japan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gulliver Posted November 5, 2001 Share Posted November 5, 2001 Originally posted by David Abraham Fenton: not sure how true that is anymore. All the Echo cards, M-Audio, Soundscape, Sblive, Frontier Design and MOTU cards seem to be running fine on the latest Athlon chipsets -david abraham Add Audiowerk 8 (by Emagic) to this list. It performs very well with (1 GHz) Athlon Thunderbird. Vladislav [ 11-05-2001: Message edited by: Gulliver ] I am back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st00ts Posted November 6, 2001 Author Share Posted November 6, 2001 ah, me ol' post has been resurrected. Since it's been posted, I've acquired an Athlon system, 1.33 Ghz on an Asus A7A mobo. I have no complaints except for one thing that Athlon builders must watch out for: Them things run HOT. According to the Asus system utility, my processor was running around 150 F. I got a different heatsink, and that solved the problem, but watch out, because the system grows very unstable (as well it should) at that temperature. In terms of DAW power, it rocks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven dunston Posted November 6, 2001 Share Posted November 6, 2001 With all the DSP processing we do, cooling is crucial no matter what your processor. Everyone be sure that you have an officially approved heatsink for your processor. And use that thermal grease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quin Posted November 10, 2001 Share Posted November 10, 2001 It seems that finally there is some real progress with the MB chipsets for the P4 - read this link : http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q4/011008/index.html I've yet to come across a MB using this chipset however... Since we talking about making our own system from scratch, does anyone have any recommendations for a ?quietstable 300W+ power supply ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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