I am planning on a major upgrade. The last thing I have to decide is Athlon 64 3200+ or 3400+. From Scott's test they seem fairly close, yet there are $170 difference in price. I am hoping to do the upgrade in 2 months. The worst part of it is that my problem is the graphics perfomrance more than CPU performance. I have yet to hit the limits of my machine... I know the graphics speed issues are due to the CPU not keeping up. I just went from a G450 (32mb) dual head to an ATI Radeo 9600SE (128mb) dual head and on the Sonar Test I got an improvement of ~5%. The projects with graohics slugginesh did not improve by much if any... Oh well...

Cheers,

Anyone tried to the K8NSPro mobo rather than the K8N Pro?

Cheers,

ORIGINAL: tazman

The worst part of it is that my problem is the graphics perfomrance more than CPU performance. I have yet to hit the limits of my machine... I know the graphics speed issues are due to the CPU not keeping up. I just went from a G450 (32mb) dual head to an ATI Radeo 9600SE (128mb) dual head and on the Sonar Test I got an improvement of ~5%. The projects with graohics slugginesh did not improve by much if any... Oh well...

Cheers,

There are plenty of users here using the G450 (or similar 32MB card) who are not experiencing any major problems. Have you seen the thread about the Powerstrip utility? Worth looking into if you're having video-related problems.

JD

Here are the results from my new LiquidDAW box.

Specs are:

Athlon64 3200+
MSI nForce3 250 motherboard
1GB Corsair PC3200 DDR (2x512MB)
ATI Radeon 64MB DH AGP video
WD 80GB 7200RPM 8MB ATA100 system drive
WD 120GB 7200rpm 8MB SATA150 audio drive
RME Multiface

46.4 ms - 27%
23.2 ms - 30%
11.6 ms - 33%
5.8 ms - 38%
2.9 ms - bounces between 47% and 51%
1.5 ms - bounces between 68% and 75%

Scott, I haven't had a chance to do much music-wise yet, as I'm still copying over files and reloading plugs and such but results so far look GREAT! She's quiet as a spring breeze, too!

Thanks!
Mike

I just built my new machine AMD64 3200+ and I get about the same performance. Cool!!!

Cheers,

ORIGINAL: Paul

Finally got the new system running so here's

AMD64 3200+
Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP
1 gig corsair 3200LLPRO
3 Maxtor 7200 drives
Matrox G450 dual head
MOTU 828MKII

23.2--30%
17.4--32%
11.6--34%
8.7--36%
5.8--41%
4.4--44%
2.9--51%
2.2--57%

The old system

T-Bird 1.4
Iwill KK266+
512 kingston ram
Everything else the same

23.2--64%
17.4--69%
11.6--76%
8.7--83%
5.8--xxx

So all in all I'm satisfied so far with the new system except for a problem I'll post new.

Paul

The gigabyte K8nSPro

Never Mind

I know this is a lot to ask, but I'm not only evaluating a new system (and I'm thinking of dual Opteron 242's), I'm also evaluating Sonar Producer 3.0 (I already own Home Studio 2004 XL).

I downloaded the Sonar Producer 3.0 demo, but I lack some of the effects (I DO have the Dreamstation and Triangle). Maybe there's a way I can get the effects and I'm just not looking in the right place.

Regardless, could one of you kind folks possibly create another stress .cwp file that doesn't refer to things that the Sonar demo doesn't have? That way I can see how several systems I have access to will do against the demo version of Sonar which will not only let me assess the system performance but also whether I want to shell out the $350 for Sonar Producer.

If it's too hard to do and/or configure due to limitations in the Sonar demo, then please ignore. If is IS doable, then I would happily report back to you as to how it did with the demo version of Sonar and maybe this would help others out there who are in my similar position.

Also, does anyone know whether Home Studio 2004 can make use of multi-processing or is that a feature that only Sonar has?

I'm about 99% positive that I'm just going to shell out the dough and get Sonar anyway, (since I normally get top of the line stuff), but it would be nice to demo it first and also demo its capabilities on a system of choice.

Thanks for any help!!!

Kevin

Ooh...good point. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks! I'll try it!

The problem I see right away is that with all the Sonitus fx missing (not to mention the Lexicon...heh heh!!), I can have the latency set down to 10 msec (as low as it goes on my Audigy) and the higest the cpu gets to is 26% (and this is an Athlon 1800+ against an Audigy...not a very accurate measurement).

Ah well...I'll have to keep messing around I guess.

I am hoping to get completely out of the Soundblaster line of cards as long as I can use something (looks like LiveSynth Pro and/or Dyad) to handle Soundfonts because I have a HUGE library of great sounds (including some incredible (to me anyway!) grand pianos.

I'll keep researching on this forum as to a good soundcard that is not a Creative card. On the other hand, I don't expect to be doing much more than: solo piano work (with some excellent soundfonts) and then later, some multitrack vocal stuff with maybe 4 tracks guitar audio and another 6 tracks of vocal audio coupled to the various soundfonts, and/or DXi instruments (and various effects)...so perhaps the latest Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro would work for what I'm trying to do...I dunno (I do like their inputs and outputs, however, most of the time I just need to get a mic or pre-amp into the computer and the rest is done purely inside the computer and then dumped to .wav...so I don't need a lot of inputs/outputs).

Kevin

My system is the following:

Dual Opteron 250's 2.4 GHz
MSI K8T Master 2
Echo Layla 24/96
WD 74GB Raptor Enterprise 10k RPM ( for OS and Programs)
WD2500JD 250GB 7200 RPM (audio)
OCZ ECC PC3200 2GB (512x4)
Plextor PX-712A DVD+-R

Here's mine:

System Spec:
Asus P4800
P4 3.2 HT 800Hz FSB
1 Gig DDR4000 Ram
WD 80gig system
WD 240gig recording
2 Delta 1010's
2 UAD-1

1.5 ms Toast
2.9 ms 64%
5.8 ms 47%
10.7 ms 35%
21.3 ms 30%
42.7 ms 29%

Here are the specs/performance of my new DAW

Specs:
Athlon64 3200+
Asus k8v SE deluxe motherboard
1GB Corsair PC3200 DDR (2x512MB)
Nvidia Ge-Force 4MX4000, 128MB DDR AGP 8x dual monitor
80GB system drive
120GB 7200rpm 8MB SATA audio drive
Lynx Two Model A
Sonar 3.1.1

ASIO
23.2 ms - 29%-30%
11.6 ms - 32%-35%
5.8 ms - 37%-39%
2.9 ms - 47%-52%
1.5 ms - 67%-75%

Good question, it may be a combination of all 3. However, the difference is not too big. I actually got one or two spikes at 41% but it stayed in 37% most of the time, with some 38s and 39s too.

yes

You can find it if you a pricewatch.com search.