OT - Motherboards

[Carlos Mills]

Hi All,

First time posting in this new forum... Looks light, warm and colorful in here :p
Since the old Intel 440-BX chipset, I've been following with great
satisfaction the invaluable knowledge of this group. So, the time has came
for a new upgrade, and I would really appreciate your input about
the best "bang for the buck Mobo". To narrow down the options, I will use
Intel Chipset (nothing against to AMD) and I am inclined to get the 865 PE
chipset. I've heard good things about the ABIT IS7-G motherboard... any
comments/suggestions are highly appreciated. Thanks.

[AudioAstronomer]

Asus p4800b. best motherboard Ive ever owned. period.

[ghowardjr]

Hi All,

First time posting in this new forum... Looks light, warm and colorful in here :p
Since the old Intel 440-BX chipset, I've been following with great
satisfaction the invaluable knowledge of this group. So, the time has came
for a new upgrade, and I would really appreciate your input about
the best "bang for the buck Mobo". To narrow down the options, I will use
Intel Chipset (nothing against to AMD) and I am inclined to get the 865 PE
chipset. I've heard good things about the ABIT IS7-G motherboard... any
comments/suggestions are highly appreciated. Thanks.

Excellent choice on the ABIT board. Just built two machines with this motherboard. Easy assembly and working as promised. The performance is excellent. Don't forget to buy 2x DDR sticks so you can take advantage of the dual channel memory capability. Basically, the only thing you're giving up on the 865 chipset is the giga-bit memory controller on some models. In many cases, this chipset has performed as well or better than the i875.

Hope this helps,
Gary

[matt]

I got an ASUS A7N8X-DX with 512m of RAM (dual) and a Barton 2500+ about 8 months ago for about $500 cnd. The price has barely moved and this machine is rock solid and just as fast as my friends ASUS P4C800 with an Intel 3.2 processor and 1gig of RAM which cost him about $1000 cnd.

[Pedro Itriago]

My echo here, I'm using P4P800, very nice board with 800 mhz bus and dual channel memory

[Carey Langille]

MSI line of boards (MSI 865PE Neo2) has been working very well for me as of late. Great price, good options.

[AudioAstronomer]

I got an ASUS A7N8X-DX with 512m of RAM (dual) and a Barton 2500+ about 8 months ago for about $500 cnd. The price has barely moved and this machine is rock solid and just as fast as my friends ASUS P4C800 with an Intel 3.2 processor and 1gig of RAM which cost him about $1000 cnd.

My brother uses this and has spoken very highly of that motherboard. (The asus)

[TotalSonic]

My echo here, I'm using P4P800, very nice board with 800 mhz bus and dual channel memory

Me too! (or should I say me three?). Anyway - I've used a number of Asus boards with Intel chipsets and have found them to be very reliable.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[mghtx]

Originally Posted by matt
I got an ASUS A7N8X-DX with 512m of RAM (dual) and a Barton 2500+ about 8 months ago for about $500 cnd. The price has barely moved and this machine is rock solid and just as fast as my friends ASUS P4C800 with an Intel 3.2 processor and 1gig of RAM which cost him about $1000 cnd.



This MB and CPU have been outstanding for many DAW's. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this on other threads. However now I would go for a low end AMD 64. But this thread was for P4 MB's so..........I would go with what Audio said, the ASUS.

[AudioAstronomer]

Just as a note, the ASUS A7N8X-DX is used in many turnkey 3d modelling systems. Brother works in this field and refuses to use anything else right now. Even has a render farm running 23 of these boards. that's a good testament in itself.

I've seen lots of people doing audio use the p4800 series of ASUS motherboards too. I beleive it's recommended by steinberg, digidesign and the samplitude crew.

[soundtrack2life]

I know its not the latest and greatest MB but I been using the ASUS P4T-E boards in a few of my systems. They are stable as heck. I even bought a spare on Ebay in case any of my systems burn out. The major down side to this MB is the memory. Rambus is expensive.
Joe

[Perry]

WOW! That's a lot of ASUS A7N8X-DX's! Think how many tracks you could get with one of those rigs! ;)

All the best,

Perry

[Pedro Itriago]

Brother works in this field and refuses to use anything else right now. Even has a render farm running 23 of these boards....
So...how exactly does he manages to stock the hay for that farm???? :confused:

[AudioAstronomer]

WOW! That's a lot of ASUS A7N8X-DX's! Think how many tracks you could get with one of those rigs! ;)

All the best,

Perry

Well, Honestly, using sawstudio I could easily see doing 72 stereo tracks with comp/eq for each computer. So that's 24x72x2. Just enough to mic each person in a choir containing every member of a small town in rhode island hehe

[Perry]

:eek:

Now that would be an interesting project to put together! Rhode Island would be nice in the Spring too.. right? ;) Maybe it would be some kind of world record.. SAWStudio records each person in entire town.. at once!

Hmmmm.... Maybe this would be a cool thing! :)

All the best,

Perry

[AudioAstronomer]

:eek:

Now that would be an interesting project to put together! Rhode Island would be nice in the Spring too.. right? ;) Maybe it would be some kind of world record.. SAWStudio records each person in entire town.. at once!

Hmmmm.... Maybe this would be a cool thing! :)

All the best,

Perry


you bring the mics and pre's and 3456 channels of input, Ill gladly petition a town, setup every last mic, pre, interface and computer :) Hows that for a deal ? :)

[Perry]

you bring the mics and pre's and 3456 channels of input, Ill gladly petition a town, setup every last mic, pre, interface and computer :) Hows that for a deal ? :)


Any chance we could find a "smaller" town? :rolleyes:

Perry

[Yura]

Hi all!

at last I had upgraid my barrow from Celeron 650 to Pentium 4.

I bought the ASUS as recommended here, exactly P4P800-SE with the better
RAM to it, and CPU 2.8 Ghz. the results are impressive for SS...
but i still use my old HD WD... in IDE. this motherboard has the SATA inside,
and I am too far from familiar with it... is it good choise to buy two HD for SATA interface? I am shure somebody is expert enouth in it, please help me.

though the HD performanse is increased from 40 stereo solid trcks to 60 ones (if compare with my old machine). but I cannot see 72 stereo trcks as AudioAstronomer has. what is the case? I guess in HD?
the CPU performance is awesome. with fact that I can work
with 40 st. tracks and 100 of plugs at buff setting 64x2 with no problems and fear about drain of spare of power! the DREAM OF LIVE MODE IS CAME TRUE!!!
while I notised an interesting thing about the Multithreading with SAW.
when I switched between off and on it (Force single CPU) in SS, I saw something like unstability when testing hard load sessoin(till 98%).
suddenly I had an idea to go in BIOS for try to turn the Multitreading off.
Unexpectly, I had result of increasing productiviti in SS about additional 15-20%.
and noticed that it works VERY stable even load achives to 99%!

[AudioAstronomer]

I beleive it is the hard drives Yura. I am using dual sata 150's in all my machines except my laptops, which use ata 133 via firewire enclosures.

[Yura]

Hi Robert!

So, the SATA is OK? what means "150"?

[AudioAstronomer]

Ive been very happy with SATA so far. fastest and most stable hard drives I've used to date. I use them in a RAID configuration.

the 150 is the throughput, 150mb per second. In reality, with the 2 drives I measured it around 90mb/s. That's about the average bweteen my computers. One goes to 70, another one goes to 98, and 2 others normally give about 90.

my firewire drive on my laptop tests at 48.3 everytime. the enclosure allows usb 2.0 as well, but simultaneous r/w and it drops through the floor in performance.

[Bob L]

Yura,

It has been suggested to me that turning off the hyperthreading in the bios once Windows is installed is trouble. I was told that Windows needed to be re-installed.

But there is a safer way to turn off Hyperthreading without re-installing Windows... the info is in the Q&A section of the website at www.SAWStudio.com (http://www.SAWStudio.com)

Bob L

[Yura]

Robert,

Ok. what model of those HD is exactly?
and, if i am not mistaken, 90 mb/s is about 12 times faster then simple HD of
7.5 mb/s throughput?????

[Yura]

Thank, Bob.

through

I'll take a look.

[Bob L]

Yura,

Most any UDMA 7200 rpm IDE drive should do the trick.

That's all I have been using for quite a while now.

Just make sure your drives are getting into UDMA modes... many times something is blocking that if your perfromance is down.

Bob L

[Carlos Mills]

Robert,

Ok. what model of those HD is exactly?
and, if i am not mistaken, 90 mb/s is about 12 times faster then simple HD of
7.5 mb/s throughput?????

I am inclined to do exactly the same up grade you just made!: ASUS P4P-800; P4 2,8 (prescot), ETC... Just out of curiosity, what video card did you get? I think I will try one of the ATI RADEONS...

As far as HD, I still use IDE (ATA 100 or ATA 133) with great results. For an even better performance (above 60 MB/s, average) you can buy the 8 Mb cache 7200 rpm ones. Western Digital and Maxtor have good ones. The average performance of "regular" (2 Mb cache) HDs is around 30 MB/s...

[AudioAstronomer]

Robert,

Ok. what model of those HD is exactly?
and, if i am not mistaken, 90 mb/s is about 12 times faster then simple HD of
7.5 mb/s throughput?????

western digital raptor. my main is using 7200rpm drives right now though, im a bit poor right now (trying not to touch savings, too tempting when you suddenly turn lots of gear into $$ to get more gear.), so it will be a bit before i upgrade that. And it works flawlessly as well, so im inclined to not try and "fix it".

[Yura]

I am inclined to do exactly the same up grade you just made!: ASUS P4P-800; P4 2,8 (prescot), ETC... Just out of curiosity, what video card did you get? I think I will try one of the ATI RADEONS...

As far as HD, I still use IDE (ATA 100 or ATA 133) with great results. For an even better performance (above 60 MB/s, average) you can buy the 8 Mb cache 7200 rpm ones. Western Digital and Maxtor have good ones. The average performance of "regular" (2 Mb cache) HDs is around 30 MB/s...

Hi Carlos!
yes all so. prescott, cache 1 meg...
Video card... I get almost be ruined in $$ after that upgrade, so I took from garbage pit a fault-free Ge-Force 4x 32 mB for $20. I need not any better. what for? I better hold some money for new HDs.

what is so curiositi, Bob's metod of modifying boot.ini did not changed results.
As I said, i got one increasing of performance yet after simpliest disabling HT
in BIOS. and after modifying boot.ini it remained the same, not less not more.
I still have not reinstolled OS with hiperthreading off in BIOS. the question is:
if it already give result of increasing throughput on 20%, can it be possible to increase it more else in way of reinstolling OS with hiperthreading off???

I can do this experiment, instolling 2-nd OS on other logical drive, and it will show the answer? i think it will be very easy to compare performance between two systems... will this experiment correct? I ask couse bouth OS will have ONE kernel placing on sistem drive. or maybe I wrong...

[Bob L]

Yura,

The idea of the re-install... is not for performance increase... but for stability.

The HAL layers and many other low level drivers and system components are apparently different when Hyperthreading is active as the OS is installed... At least that is what I have been led to believe... I don't know all the details for sure.

Leave it turned ON in the Bios and simply modify the boot.ini... you should maintain better stability and get your slight performance increase as well.

Bob L

[Pedro Itriago]

I put an ati 9800 pro on my p4p800, sweet card. Although the new x800 looks very nice.

Anyway, with all the new talk about pci express mobos and dual core cpu's, I think we should either buy the best there is now or wait until the new batch of things appear. :rolleyes:

Then again, you have to always wait to see how new technology behaves before jumping in, that is if you don't have an adventurer's heart :cool:

[Yura]

Yura,
Leave it turned ON in the Bios and simply modify the boot.ini... you should maintain better stability and get your slight performance increase as well.
Bob L

Thanks, Bob,
Realy its works all to be O.K.

[Carlos Mills]

Yura,

It has been suggested to me that turning off the hyperthreading in the bios once Windows is installed is trouble. I was told that Windows needed to be re-installed.

But there is a safer way to turn off Hyperthreading without re-installing Windows... the info is in the Q&A section of the website at www.SAWStudio.com (http://www.SAWStudio.com)

Bob L

Hi Bob,

It's very nice to have this direct access to you again! Thanks for this wonderful forum. :)

1) I was planning to disable HT in the BIOS before installing windows XP professional, since I am doing a clear install. Do you think this is not necessary?

2) Can you give me further details about turning off Hyperthreading without re-installing Windows? I looked in the O&A section and did not find the information...

TIA and take care,

Carlos

[Carlos Mills]

Hi Carlos!

I can do this experiment, instolling 2-nd OS on other logical drive, and it will show the answer? i think it will be very easy to compare performance between two systems... will this experiment correct? I ask couse bouth OS will have ONE kernel placing on sistem drive. or maybe I wrong...

I guess (just guess) that if you install Windows in another partition you will have a completly separated OS, in all aspects.
Anyway it is usually a good idea to have a second OS installed in the same DAW for testing purposes. I always do this; so whenever I have a plug in or something else I want to test, I install it first in the "second" OS, to check it out... Unless, it is an already very secure procedure, like installing a SAWStudio update... :D

Best regards,

[Bob L]

Select View All Questions in the Q&A section of the site and look at question 4.

It is talking about having an option between single and dual on a dual cpu system... you can use it the same way on a Hyperthreading system... or simply add the /onecpu option to the single boot entry in the boot.ini file to force hypthreading off.

Bob L

[TotalSonic]

Ive been very happy with SATA so far. fastest and most stable hard drives I've used to date. I use them in a RAID configuration.


I've been having really good success with the Seagate SATA drives (althugh I am using them non-RAID) also. They're nice and quiet as a bonus.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[AudioAstronomer]

The raptor's are banshees. I measured both running max at 48db (total). I often track in the control room so I've well isolated the computers and it's well below ambient noise level of the room (under 20, meter doesnt go lower).

[edit] the caviar's arent much quiter either...

Zalman has some very attractive offers for quieting stuff as well. I prefer to do it myself though. :)

[Yura]

Hi Bob,

1) I was planning to disable HT in the BIOS before installing windows XP professional, since I am doing a clear install. Do you think this is not necessary?
Carlos

Carlos,

I did that test of reinstalling Win XP pro with disabled HT in BIOS in order to
make shure definitively if there is the difference between disabling it after installation OS, as discribed by Bob.
with my P4P800SE I found no any difference between two systems in performance in SS. in each of them increasing of performance is absolutely the same and about 5 % in compare with HT enabled. I watched for stability too.

But I can say in other way, there is borderline between this and another using of SS... I mean, in such machine where SS is works with Video DV through Matrox' output, trying to disabling HT brings me one time to bad results. but I will check this once again for shure... that machine is far from me this time...