Jeez, I never meant to start a war off here!!
Seriously, thanks everybody for the feedback. Perhaps I should be more specific about the issues in question. I'm a producer and remixer and the system in question is our studio's principal audio workstation. It's fitted with two of Creamware's Scope boards, which run 30 Motorola SHARC chips for audio processing. Unfortunately this hardware, coupled with the fact that we may have up to 100 24bit audio tracks running up/down the PCI bus means that PCI bus performance is absolutely crucial to the system's success. In addition, the current batch of DAW and audio editing software, along with all the plug-ins we use puts a heavy load on the processor, so pure grunt power is also important.
The Athlon System we currently have (Asus A7V, 512Mb PC133, ATA100 2x40Gb etc.) is great in the grunt department, but there is a very real issue with PCI performance. Creamware have also had numerous complaints from other users running Via KT133 based systems, to the extent that they are no longer recommending Via boards for use with their hardware. I've even spoken to AMD on this point, who have acknowledged that the high end audio/video workstation market is still perhaps not best served by their products - not because of the processors (they seem to me at least to be superior to Intel alternatives in this specific application because of superior floating point performance), but because of current chipset support. If I had my way I'd go Athlon, but the last couple of months experience has demonstrated that the chipset issues in question need attention, and much as I had hoped the AMD760 might sort things out, early reports I've heard suggest otherwise - effectively the Southbridge sounds like it's the same as the KT133, which means little change on the PCI front.
I could be way off the mark here, and maybe my problems were specific to the Asus A7V. For a start we couldn't get it to ruin with more than 512Mb, despite originally spec'ing 768Mb. Then we discovered it was originally only recommended by AMD up to 900MHz, although this has changed recently. If anybody can recommend a Socket A motherboard that is rock solid, gives server type reliability and chunky PCI bus performance then that would be a real solution for me and I'd love to hear. I was tempted to go for an AMD 760, DDR system but I figure they're a good couple of months from being reliabel and I can't afford to be a guinea pig again.
So we ended up at a PIII Supermicro platform on the simple criteria of reliability, horsepower and PCI bus performance. My OEM is not trying to rip me off - they are building this system for practically no additional cost and taking back the Athlon system. Personally I don't feel great about going for PIII as our all encompassing, future proofing solution, because it's near the end of the line. But unless somebody can guarantee me an Athlon system that meets the criteria it seems to be the most sensible option - we simply can't afford to have another system that gives PCI Master/Bus Overflow errors every few minutes, crashes when too many tracks are playing and just generally seems awkward with big bus loads.
I hope this makes sense. My opinions are not intended to be pro or anti Intel/AMD, they're just based on my own experiences and what I've gleaned from people who know more than I do.
I'm enormnously grateful for any further advice and if anyone prefers to mail me off-list for fear of getting involved in a slagging match then that's cool to (mail me
here).
Many thanks again.
Jules
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