- Aug 24, 2000
- 4,153
- 4
- 81
Cliffs:
- Looking for the "sweet spot" video card for under or around $200.00
- Undecided on OS. XP64 or Vista64. Considerations include in this order of priority:
1. Driver support/OS stability.
2. Cakewalk SONAR 7 PE / media encoding performance.
3. Gaming performance.
4. General usage / User friendliness.
Detailed write-up for those interested:
I first began building this system with a single purpose in mind and that was to run Cakewalk Sonar 7 Produce Edition and run it well.... For those who don't know, Sonar PE is a professional grade recording studio software suite used for multi-track audio/MIDI recording/editing and can be used for music video creation.
Sonar is optimised to run on multiple cores so naturally this system is centered around a Q6600 that will run a moderate OC (about 3 GHZ - 9x333).
I knew a ton of ram would always be beneficial so I opted for 4 GB's of Corsair XMS2 6400 CAS4.
Good disk transfer is a must and these SONAR projects can grow quite large so I opted for a pair of Segate 250GB HDD's in a RAID 0 and recycled an older WD 500GB IDE drive for session backups (incase of a RAID failure).
My audio interface for recording uses Firewire, so I needed a MoBo that would be a good overclocker, support RAID, and Firewire so I picked up a good deal on an ABIT IP35Pro for $128.00.
To power all of this I've selected a Corsair VX550 PSU. It's not modular, but the performance numbers were on par with the HX520 and the price point was a little nicer.
To keep everything nice and cool I went with a Zalman CNSF 9700HSF and an Antec 900 Case. To keep noise down I'm going to try all the tri cool fans on low speed at first and see how things go. The Zalman is supposed to be pretty quite according to this.
-----Here is where I need your help.-----
1. After building all of this, I took a step back and realized I had a rig that is in all likelyness would perform nicely in the studio, but could also double as a worthy gamer...
Currently I have an ATI 1300Pro that was a freebie (given to me by a friend) that would more than do the job of displaying Cakewalk, but for gaming??? NOT!! So, where is the sweet spot for "midrange" gaming video cards.
I'm not interested in SLI or X-fire or anything over $200.00 really, but I would like to try my hand at Bioshock or some of the other newer games if the mood ever struck me.
2. SONAR specifically recommends Windows XP64 for optimim performance, but I have read some articles specific to Cakewalk here and here discussing how Microsoft changed something in the way Vista handles audio encoding that actually makes it better than XP64 .
On the other hand, we have Vista on one PC at my house already and I absolutely loathe that OS starting with all the Nanny-State hand holding, right down to the look and feel of it (has anyone actually done a successful file search with this OS yet?). But, then again, Vista is the future - like it or not, so the drive support for XP64 concerns me some.
Anyway, there you have it - I'd like to upgrade to a worthy video card that won't cost me my next three paychecks and I'm torn about which operating system to go with. XP64 or Vista64.
Thanks for listening!!
-JR..
- Looking for the "sweet spot" video card for under or around $200.00
- Undecided on OS. XP64 or Vista64. Considerations include in this order of priority:
1. Driver support/OS stability.
2. Cakewalk SONAR 7 PE / media encoding performance.
3. Gaming performance.
4. General usage / User friendliness.
Detailed write-up for those interested:
I first began building this system with a single purpose in mind and that was to run Cakewalk Sonar 7 Produce Edition and run it well.... For those who don't know, Sonar PE is a professional grade recording studio software suite used for multi-track audio/MIDI recording/editing and can be used for music video creation.
Sonar is optimised to run on multiple cores so naturally this system is centered around a Q6600 that will run a moderate OC (about 3 GHZ - 9x333).
I knew a ton of ram would always be beneficial so I opted for 4 GB's of Corsair XMS2 6400 CAS4.
Good disk transfer is a must and these SONAR projects can grow quite large so I opted for a pair of Segate 250GB HDD's in a RAID 0 and recycled an older WD 500GB IDE drive for session backups (incase of a RAID failure).
My audio interface for recording uses Firewire, so I needed a MoBo that would be a good overclocker, support RAID, and Firewire so I picked up a good deal on an ABIT IP35Pro for $128.00.
To power all of this I've selected a Corsair VX550 PSU. It's not modular, but the performance numbers were on par with the HX520 and the price point was a little nicer.
To keep everything nice and cool I went with a Zalman CNSF 9700HSF and an Antec 900 Case. To keep noise down I'm going to try all the tri cool fans on low speed at first and see how things go. The Zalman is supposed to be pretty quite according to this.
-----Here is where I need your help.-----
1. After building all of this, I took a step back and realized I had a rig that is in all likelyness would perform nicely in the studio, but could also double as a worthy gamer...
Currently I have an ATI 1300Pro that was a freebie (given to me by a friend) that would more than do the job of displaying Cakewalk, but for gaming??? NOT!! So, where is the sweet spot for "midrange" gaming video cards.
I'm not interested in SLI or X-fire or anything over $200.00 really, but I would like to try my hand at Bioshock or some of the other newer games if the mood ever struck me.
2. SONAR specifically recommends Windows XP64 for optimim performance, but I have read some articles specific to Cakewalk here and here discussing how Microsoft changed something in the way Vista handles audio encoding that actually makes it better than XP64 .
On the other hand, we have Vista on one PC at my house already and I absolutely loathe that OS starting with all the Nanny-State hand holding, right down to the look and feel of it (has anyone actually done a successful file search with this OS yet?). But, then again, Vista is the future - like it or not, so the drive support for XP64 concerns me some.
Anyway, there you have it - I'd like to upgrade to a worthy video card that won't cost me my next three paychecks and I'm torn about which operating system to go with. XP64 or Vista64.
Thanks for listening!!
-JR..
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