Anyone using AMD chips with SAW?

[Oz Nimbus]

Hey all,

Just curious if anyone is running SAW on AMD stuff. My 3 year old 2.8 ghz p4 is getting a little slow in other apps, & my main computer tech guy swears by the new AMD stuff. That being said, does anyone have any idea how Saw runs on an AMD 3800+ X2??

Thanks,
-0z-

[Perry]

Hey all,

Just curious if anyone is running SAW on AMD stuff. My 3 year old 2.8 ghz p4 is getting a little slow in other apps, & my main computer tech guy swears by the new AMD stuff. That being said, does anyone have any idea how Saw runs on an AMD 3800+ X2??

Thanks,
-0z-

Only every day. :) For years... :D

[Naturally Digital]

Hey Oz,

I've been running AMD chips with SAW for years now. My only Intel machine is a Xeon machine. I don't think there is much difference but I have tested and verified the superior floating point processing of the AMD chips. This comes into play with the SAW channel EQ's and any plugins that use floating point math. In case you weren't aware, AMD has had an edge on Intel on FP performance because they use the FP architecture from the old DEC Alpha processor.

I've been very happy with the performance. We have a 3500+ 64 bit processor machine here but haven't run SAW on it very much. The few times we have done so, it was fine.

[Perry]

Hey all,

Just curious if anyone is running SAW on AMD stuff. My 3 year old 2.8 ghz p4 is getting a little slow in other apps, & my main computer tech guy swears by the new AMD stuff. That being said, does anyone have any idea how Saw runs on an AMD 3800+ X2??

Thanks,
-0z-

And oh.. the last question.. I just built an AMD X2 3800+ and literally just brought it on line a few days ago. Haven't gotten into testing SAW on it yet. However, I built a 4200+ X2 for Ken Burke here in Vancouver back a few months ago and he's been lovin it with SAWStudio. Says it runs great. I initially tested it out and it seemed quite good.

What I would be cautious of is if you are planning to run anything like the UAD-1 and/or Powercore... and who knows about some of the new dsp powered stuff just coming onto the scene? Some of these things are finicky about X2 multi-processors.. particularly the UAD-1. Some guys are using a hack to force the UAD-1 to only use one processor though and from what I've read this seems to be working... mostly. Still... use caution if you plan to use any of the dsp cards. If not... then it should be smooth sailing.

One other thing though is that the new AM2 chips are out now... these support DDR2 and have other new enhancements form AMD, but it's a little early yet. Haven't seen any reports from DAW users on these new CPU's. You might want to do a search around the forums and see if there's any first hand news before making that move... though my guess is it would be safe.

Just to add.. my main DAW at the moment is a single core AMD 3700+... works super.

One other thing to add is that the AMD chips run very cool. If you want to opt for an after market cpu 'quiet' cooler and a quiet case and powerr supply, you can have a near silent DAW rig fairly easily.

All the best,

Perry

[Himhui]

Hey Oz,

I've been running AMD chips with SAW for years now. My only Intel machine is an Opteron machine......

Opteron is not intel neither.....:D

[Mark Stebbeds]

My 3 year old 2.8 ghz p4 is getting a little slow in other apps, & my main computer tech guy swears by the new AMD stuff.

Could you elaborate on what is running slow? I'm trying to find a reason to upgrade my 2.2gHz p4, but am hard pressed to find a problem. My computer tech tells me my issues are software related and not CPU speed.

Mark

[tomasino]

Switched to an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (single core) about 4 or 5 months ago (from a dual PIII-550 system).

No comparison. The AMD rocks. Haven't had a single problem with it. Everything in SawStudio is pretty much instantaneous.

I went with the Gigabyte Mobo and some dual channel RAM. Pretty much pieced together a system following a post from Perry where he described all the components (a while back).

Thanks Perry! :cool:

Works good OZ. You'll see a significant performance boost.

[Naturally Digital]

Opteron is not intel neither.....:DYeah, thanks... Just realized the typo myself too. Meant to say Xeon.

[Arco]

Very happily running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dualcore 3800+. Certainly much faster than the 2.6 Pentium IV I have on my now second machine. I haven't hit the wall or gotten anywhere near it yet. Even a few Spazio's or 3 or 4 instances of SIR hardly cause a stir.

[Perry]

Very happily running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dualcore 3800+. Certainly much faster than the 2.6 Pentium IV I have on my now second machine. I haven't hit the wall or gotten anywhere near it yet. Even a few Spazio's or 3 or 4 instances of SIR hardly cause a stir.

Hi Arco,

Just curious... which mobo are you running? Is it nForce 3 or nForce 4 chipset?

The machine I built for Ken with the 4200+ was nForce 3 and that worked great. The one I just built with the X2 3800+ was nForce 4 but I haven't tested it for DAW service yet.

I'm trying to keep up with the latestest on the nForce 4 boards to see if all the kinks ever got worked out.... love to hear anything first hand from SAWStudio users on this.

And yeah... Ken was floored when I set up a test session for him originally and had (if I recall correctly) 5-6 instances of SIR running along with lots of other stuff in SAWStudio. His jaw literally dropped! :)

thanks,

Perry

[Oz Nimbus]

Could you elaborate on what is running slow? I'm trying to find a reason to upgrade my 2.2gHz p4, but am hard pressed to find a problem. My computer tech tells me my issues are software related and not CPU speed.

Mark

Yeah. I just added a 24 inch widescreen monitor that runs at 1920X1200 pixels native, and Battlefield 2 is slowing down from having to push all those pixels! Saw runs great, so yeah, no problems there. It's purely for vanity, I guess. BTW, don't bother with the lectures about "separate machines" and such, I've heard it.

-0z-

[Arco]

Hey Perry, I wanted a microATX footprint so my choices were limited. I couldn't find an nForce3 so I went with an nForce4 (Foxconn--very stripped down model with no onboard video). The first board I tried was an MSI and onboard video caused a strange little flutter from my RME HDSP 9632 so I bagged it for a much cheaper and lesser-known maker.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/EN-US/Product/motherboard_detail.aspx?ID=en-gb0000148

I was honing in on a Shuttle but the price was too much..but that would have been an nForce3.


Hi Arco,

Just curious... which mobo are you running? Is it nForce 3 or nForce 4 chipset?

The machine I built for Ken with the 4200+ was nForce 3 and that worked great. The one I just built with the X2 3800+ was nForce 4 but I haven't tested it for DAW service yet.



Perry

[Mark Stebbeds]

Yeah. I just added a 24 inch widescreen monitor that runs at 1920X1200 pixels native, and Battlefield 2 is slowing down from having to push all those pixels! Saw runs great, so yeah, no problems there. It's purely for vanity, I guess. BTW, don't bother with the lectures about "separate machines" and such, I've heard it.

-0z-

OK, so I'm guessing Battefield is a video game? It seems like video games push the performance limits more than anything else.

I also have a lot of other stuff on my audio machine, and have never had any of the problems that other folks seemed scared of.

Mark

[Kris]

I only work on other peoples SAW computers, but I just built an AMD Quad Opteron. It runs PT crazy fast, I am about to download the SS demo to see how it performs on my computer. Is there anything I should be aware of when using 4 cores:D at once. My feeling is that SS will freak:eek: me out to the point of fainting. I will go and download it now, when I get my comuter back from the studio it is currently at (should be tomorow) I will run some tests and see how she performs.

[Perry]

Hey Perry, I wanted a microATX footprint so my choices were limited. I couldn't find an nForce3 so I went with an nForce4 (Foxconn--very stripped down model with no onboard video). The first board I tried was an MSI and onboard video caused a strange little flutter from my RME HDSP 9632 so I bagged it for a much cheaper and lesser-known maker.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/EN-US/Product/motherboard_detail.aspx?ID=en-gb0000148

I was honing in on a Shuttle but the price was too much..but that would have been an nForce3.

Thanks for the info Arco! :) I thought of building one of those little guys too... might yet.... seems a cool way to go. Nice to hear the nForce 4 is working well for you. It may be a while before I can really test out my new nForce 4 rig properly, but sooner or later this HAS to work... because there won't be any more NF 3 boards!

Thanks again!

Perry

[Perry]

I only work on other peoples SAW computers, but I just built an AMD Quad Opteron. It runs PT crazy fast, I am about to download the SS demo to see how it performs on my computer. Is there anything I should be aware of when using 4 cores:D at once. My feeling is that SS will freak:eek: me out to the point of fainting. I will go and download it now, when I get my comuter back from the studio it is currently at (should be tomorow) I will run some tests and see how she performs.

Hey Yeah! Thanks Kris.. that would be nice. Love to hear about your results with this. :) I've been waiting to hear from someone running SAWStudio on one of these. And ummmm.... maybe you should have a friend handy in case of fainting.... :rolleyes: :D

Thanks,

Perry

[Arco]

Yeah, I fell for the Antec case and built around that..the little guy packs quite a punch.


Thanks for the info Arco! :) I thought of building one of those little guys too... might yet.... seems a cool way to go. Nice to hear the nForce 4 is working well for you. It may be a while before I can really test out my new nForce 4 rig properly, but sooner or later this HAS to work... because there won't be any more NF 3 boards!

Thanks again!

Perry