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Forums - Computer music & technology
Subject: Which motherboard for audio PC?
Original Message Date: 30-Jul-00 @ 11:33 AM - Which motherboard for audio PC?
Can anyone recommend a board with a 133MHz front side bus, six PCI slots, 1GIG max ram or higher and Ultra Wide SCSI? I've looked at the Intel SE440BX just because it's compatible, but I'd like something more expandable and powerful...
Thanks.
Thanks.
Message 11/37 10-Aug-00 @ 08:03 AM - RE: Which motherboard for audio PC?
take a look at the abit se6. it has 133 bus and supports the uata 100 drives. it got high marks for reliability but apparently the performance gains were not as high as expected. this will be fixed in further bios revisions though. also check out the abit raid 133...really solid and fast but you have to run winnt or 2000. it doesn't seem like there are too many 133mhz , uata100 boards out there yet that have proven themselves. thus, i'm looking at the asus cubx board rite now, which doesn't support uata 100 but uses the trusty bx chipset. seems tite. anyone heard anything on it?
Message 12/37 11-Aug-00 @ 07:39 PM - RE: Which motherboard for audio PC?
dud3, buy an adaptec $200 2940uw and a ide channeled mobo, which is a lot more flexible than static scsi. abit or asus.
Message 13/37 16-Aug-00 @ 03:07 PM - RE: Which motherboard for audio PC?
Anyone heard of any incompatibility issues with the VIA 133A chipset? I'm looking around for a new audio interface, so I'd like to know...
Tomek S.
Tomek S.
Message 14/37 16-Aug-00 @ 07:52 PM - C4 Late Night Discussion
Event soundcards don't like VIA IIRC.
What about the new 266MhZ FSB mobos just about to hit town? These are coming late this year and are set to be the AMD standard for quite a while. A fast bus (as opposed to 133MhZ) has a highly beneficial effect on multimedia performance, relative to mere clock speed. Considering Intel's ballsup with RDRAM and the Thunderbird's hand-over-fist advantage over the Pentium III this may well be the way to go. Intel does not have a god-given monopoly on big musical iron :-D
What of SSE, the Intel technology capable of doubling the performance of many VST plugins, you ask? Well, the AMD website (see http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/pdf/3dnow_wp.pdf) states (and I quoth, heh-hem):
"The AMD Athlon processor features an enhanced version of 3DNow! that adds 24 new instructions to the existing 21 original 3DNow! instructions. These 24 new instructions include:
"12 instructions that improve multimedia-enhanced integer math calculations used in such applications as speech recognition and video processing
7 instructions that accelerate data movement for more detailed graphics and new functionality for Internet browser plug-ins and other streaming applications, enabling a richer Internet experience
5 DSP instructions that enhance the performance of communications applications, including soft modems, soft ADSL, MP3, and Dolby Digital surround sound processing. This DSP functionality is unique to the AMD Athlon processor and not supported by Intel's PentiumŪ III processor."
These instructions are AMD's own implementation of SIMD. Do not be offput by the graphics-oriented moniker, SSE also was aimed at graphics and web-apps (as these are the principle money spinners for computer manufacturers) but found applications in audio apps such as Cubase.
See also http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jul00/articles/athlon_xtk.htm+sw1000xg+amd&hl=en
BTW I am not an AMD rep... And bear in mind it might be worth waiting for the 760 MP motherboards which enable multiprocessing under Win2K (which also provides a substantial performance boost over Win9x with carefully selected audio components... e.g the SW1000XG works OK in Win2K with the new drivers... speshially with the DirectX Full Duplex Drivers). These should hopefully arrive late this year (according to AMD reports). That should provide more processing power than Windows will know what to do with for the forseeable future (sadly BeOS is in a beleagured state these days... but who knows with Microsoft's poxy dot.net strategy... Internet integration is Steinberg's justification for veering from the "broadband OS"... maybe dot.net could veer them back)
Hopefully these boards will have SCSI on them... as documented these take a lot of steam off the processor and PCI bus for high track counts. USB is a must, and if Firewire gets serious support soon I wouldn't be grumbling.
Running, say, Steinberg Nuendo (esp. when it supports VST2 real soon) on Win2K, and a dual AMD Athlon 1GhZ+ system with such features should kick some serious buttski. A Matrox Millenium G400 or better should leave the processor to concentrate on the serious number crunching required and provide dual screens support.
OTOH, when MAC OS X takes off next year Macs could get a serious lease of life, providing heavyweight multiprocessing for a decent RISC CPU already classed as a supercomputer. Motorola are having a hard time pushing the G4 past 500MhZ so the new Mac G4 is a dual processing system (Mac OS has support multiprocessing for a long time but OS X will have seriously smooth MP). If Mac OS X audio peripheral support (note the low latencies already reported of OS X audio drivers) can beat the rather tardy WDM drivers to the market then Emagic and Steinberg will have to support OS X on the latest Macs and therefore multiprocessing, this will affect their products cross platform (note the traditional Mac->PC migration).
Host procsessing is definitely the way to go, and would eliminate a lot of the risk investing in specialised hardware of limited market appeal and longevity, especially with the smoother multisasking of OS X and Win2K.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, don't ya love it? NO!
What about the new 266MhZ FSB mobos just about to hit town? These are coming late this year and are set to be the AMD standard for quite a while. A fast bus (as opposed to 133MhZ) has a highly beneficial effect on multimedia performance, relative to mere clock speed. Considering Intel's ballsup with RDRAM and the Thunderbird's hand-over-fist advantage over the Pentium III this may well be the way to go. Intel does not have a god-given monopoly on big musical iron :-D
What of SSE, the Intel technology capable of doubling the performance of many VST plugins, you ask? Well, the AMD website (see http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/pdf/3dnow_wp.pdf) states (and I quoth, heh-hem):
"The AMD Athlon processor features an enhanced version of 3DNow! that adds 24 new instructions to the existing 21 original 3DNow! instructions. These 24 new instructions include:
"12 instructions that improve multimedia-enhanced integer math calculations used in such applications as speech recognition and video processing
7 instructions that accelerate data movement for more detailed graphics and new functionality for Internet browser plug-ins and other streaming applications, enabling a richer Internet experience
5 DSP instructions that enhance the performance of communications applications, including soft modems, soft ADSL, MP3, and Dolby Digital surround sound processing. This DSP functionality is unique to the AMD Athlon processor and not supported by Intel's PentiumŪ III processor."
These instructions are AMD's own implementation of SIMD. Do not be offput by the graphics-oriented moniker, SSE also was aimed at graphics and web-apps (as these are the principle money spinners for computer manufacturers) but found applications in audio apps such as Cubase.
See also http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jul00/articles/athlon_xtk.htm+sw1000xg+amd&hl=en
BTW I am not an AMD rep... And bear in mind it might be worth waiting for the 760 MP motherboards which enable multiprocessing under Win2K (which also provides a substantial performance boost over Win9x with carefully selected audio components... e.g the SW1000XG works OK in Win2K with the new drivers... speshially with the DirectX Full Duplex Drivers). These should hopefully arrive late this year (according to AMD reports). That should provide more processing power than Windows will know what to do with for the forseeable future (sadly BeOS is in a beleagured state these days... but who knows with Microsoft's poxy dot.net strategy... Internet integration is Steinberg's justification for veering from the "broadband OS"... maybe dot.net could veer them back)
Hopefully these boards will have SCSI on them... as documented these take a lot of steam off the processor and PCI bus for high track counts. USB is a must, and if Firewire gets serious support soon I wouldn't be grumbling.
Running, say, Steinberg Nuendo (esp. when it supports VST2 real soon) on Win2K, and a dual AMD Athlon 1GhZ+ system with such features should kick some serious buttski. A Matrox Millenium G400 or better should leave the processor to concentrate on the serious number crunching required and provide dual screens support.
OTOH, when MAC OS X takes off next year Macs could get a serious lease of life, providing heavyweight multiprocessing for a decent RISC CPU already classed as a supercomputer. Motorola are having a hard time pushing the G4 past 500MhZ so the new Mac G4 is a dual processing system (Mac OS has support multiprocessing for a long time but OS X will have seriously smooth MP). If Mac OS X audio peripheral support (note the low latencies already reported of OS X audio drivers) can beat the rather tardy WDM drivers to the market then Emagic and Steinberg will have to support OS X on the latest Macs and therefore multiprocessing, this will affect their products cross platform (note the traditional Mac->PC migration).
Host procsessing is definitely the way to go, and would eliminate a lot of the risk investing in specialised hardware of limited market appeal and longevity, especially with the smoother multisasking of OS X and Win2K.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, don't ya love it? NO!
Message 15/37 17-Aug-00 @ 06:52 AM - RE: Which motherboard for audio PC?
Jasper
Posts: 424
Link?: No link
File?: No file
I think you'd have to be brave (or stupid) to rely on a brand new motherboard for your audio. unless you really have a need for the power.
Honestly, save yourself a headache and go for an established intel chipset that works.
Unless you love fiddling with settings for weeks on end.
Honestly, save yourself a headache and go for an established intel chipset that works.
Unless you love fiddling with settings for weeks on end.
Message 16/37 17-Aug-00 @ 09:33 AM - RE: Which motherboard for audio PC?
The only problem with 3DNow vs. SIMD is that I don't think any audio applications support the 3DNow at present point. I don't think it's much of a deal either, since not so many audio programs support SIMD either, and from what I've heard the performance boost isn't that drastic (maybe I'm wrong).
I've read about the problem with Event (or actually Echo) soundcards on their website - it seems the problem was with an old, er, 'IRQ routing miniport driver'.
All in all, it seems that this VIA chipset is a much more solid option than the new Intel chipsets, while BX chipset doesn't really support 133 FSB and some other things, that's the reason you won't see it in new (brand name) PIII PC's.
Anyway, I already have a PC with a Tyan mobo based on the VIA133A chipset, and it works really nice so far with Cubase and SBLive, just wondering if anybody had any experience about it's performance with more upscale audio interfaces.
Cheers,
Tomek S.
I've read about the problem with Event (or actually Echo) soundcards on their website - it seems the problem was with an old, er, 'IRQ routing miniport driver'.
All in all, it seems that this VIA chipset is a much more solid option than the new Intel chipsets, while BX chipset doesn't really support 133 FSB and some other things, that's the reason you won't see it in new (brand name) PIII PC's.
Anyway, I already have a PC with a Tyan mobo based on the VIA133A chipset, and it works really nice so far with Cubase and SBLive, just wondering if anybody had any experience about it's performance with more upscale audio interfaces.
Cheers,
Tomek S.
Message 17/37 17-Aug-00 @ 07:09 PM - RE: Which motherboard for audio PC?
Before i got my asus k7v i checked bunch of wesite for reliability, and k7 motherboard are as relable as the intel motherboards, but i hearsd some motherboards are not happy with some video cards, i have a tnt2 athat i am gonna install when i get the k7 cpu, i will start a new thread when i am done.
i am aiming for a music production pc for under 1500$ including the sound card excluding monitor, i will test the new setup and put a new thread to show people if my setup is stable, i am going for 256 ram or 128, depends on how cheap i am gonna get the ram for, tnt2 agp card that i already have, probably hoontech soundcard or second hand pulsar with athlon750-800 overclocked to 1Ghz i already have a dsl modem.and midiman 2x2 usb midi interface. i hope this will help people for building a new pc or buying parts/hardware.
i am aiming for a music production pc for under 1500$ including the sound card excluding monitor, i will test the new setup and put a new thread to show people if my setup is stable, i am going for 256 ram or 128, depends on how cheap i am gonna get the ram for, tnt2 agp card that i already have, probably hoontech soundcard or second hand pulsar with athlon750-800 overclocked to 1Ghz i already have a dsl modem.and midiman 2x2 usb midi interface. i hope this will help people for building a new pc or buying parts/hardware.
Message 18/37 18-Aug-00 @ 04:47 AM - RE: Which motherboard for audio PC?
Jasper
Posts: 424
Link?: No link
File?: No file
are you saying that you have an athlon setup that is reliable and works?
we could do with a list of peoples exact setups that works, people could check before buying stuff.
I might put a page together with this kind of info on.
we could do with a list of peoples exact setups that works, people could check before buying stuff.
I might put a page together with this kind of info on.
Message 19/37 18-Aug-00 @ 08:49 AM - Lies, damn lies and benchmarks
Sounds like a good idea... Would be great to have an audio benchmarking site a la Tom's Hardware, Sharky Extreme. I have absolutely NO interest in playing silly little games - MUCH more interested in 2D acceleration/multi-screen support/compatibility issues in a graphics card than 3D - that's surplus to requirements.
It would great to have some performance greedy apps and have some standard benchmark tests (weeding out any systems which are not rock-solid stable - this CAN be achieved by cutting down the potential causes of a crash - for instance, using a dedicated music boot based on 98Lite, as well as following all the standard tips - see Prorec for an example) e.g. max polyphony in Reaktor/Sync Modular/Vaz for some carefully pre-selected ensembles (as VST2 plugins for both Logic and Cubase, and if you absolutely must, DirectX for Cakewalk - ugh), along with minimum reliable latency achieved. Anybody fancy lending me some hardware for such a test? Dan Philips, are you reading this ;-)
The fact is there is a paucity of information available from anywhere on such issues, beyond Sound on Sound magazine and a few sites such as Kilo's, Prorec, Harmony Central. Perhaps such comprehensive testing would raise the stakes for audio manufacturers, resulting in more reliable and competitive products. The more we can clarify the relative merits of different setups, the better deal all of us under-represented musos will get.
I hate all these people who say "Why would you want such a fast PC? What would you want to do with it, except running [f**king] SETI?" - two words - SYNC MODULAR, ya putz, the perfomance I could get out of it on a 2x Athlon 1GhZ would rival a Pulsar or maybe even an Oasys -if I ran SynC (which, unlike Reaktor and Vaz, is flexible enough to do good acoustic modelling) at at least 2X output frequency to replicate the Oasys antialising - and for a very competitive price.
Going host helps guarantee your musical and financial investment in a system - x86 compatibles aren't going out of fashion anytime soon, MI manufacturers come and go.
It would great to have some performance greedy apps and have some standard benchmark tests (weeding out any systems which are not rock-solid stable - this CAN be achieved by cutting down the potential causes of a crash - for instance, using a dedicated music boot based on 98Lite, as well as following all the standard tips - see Prorec for an example) e.g. max polyphony in Reaktor/Sync Modular/Vaz for some carefully pre-selected ensembles (as VST2 plugins for both Logic and Cubase, and if you absolutely must, DirectX for Cakewalk - ugh), along with minimum reliable latency achieved. Anybody fancy lending me some hardware for such a test? Dan Philips, are you reading this ;-)
The fact is there is a paucity of information available from anywhere on such issues, beyond Sound on Sound magazine and a few sites such as Kilo's, Prorec, Harmony Central. Perhaps such comprehensive testing would raise the stakes for audio manufacturers, resulting in more reliable and competitive products. The more we can clarify the relative merits of different setups, the better deal all of us under-represented musos will get.
I hate all these people who say "Why would you want such a fast PC? What would you want to do with it, except running [f**king] SETI?" - two words - SYNC MODULAR, ya putz, the perfomance I could get out of it on a 2x Athlon 1GhZ would rival a Pulsar or maybe even an Oasys -if I ran SynC (which, unlike Reaktor and Vaz, is flexible enough to do good acoustic modelling) at at least 2X output frequency to replicate the Oasys antialising - and for a very competitive price.
Going host helps guarantee your musical and financial investment in a system - x86 compatibles aren't going out of fashion anytime soon, MI manufacturers come and go.
Message 20/37 18-Aug-00 @ 09:02 AM - RE: Which motherboard for audio PC?
Please find above a comprehensive list of tips on optimizing your system for audio.
I found this on an interesting thread on cubase.net discussing optimisation
http://www.cubase.net/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003049.html
I found this on an interesting thread on cubase.net discussing optimisation
http://www.cubase.net/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003049.html
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