Upgrading for Audio / Video (mostly audio) need advice

[wellsbeach]

Been into AMD for a whille, presently running AMD XP 2400 at 2600 speed, but the bottleneck is the OLD PC2100.

Looking to get more vst's plug-ins from faster CPU and Memory, need advice.

Confused between P4 3.2 northwood and prescott. Would probably get the newer AMD64 3800, but $$ is a problem.

Thanks for any help.

1st post here by the way.

 

[AristoV300]

Welcome to the forums. At the current speeds the Prescott is crippled due to its longer pipelines and it rund way too hot. The northwood is the better for now. WHen the Prescott hits the 4ghz that is when it will shine.

 

[Docomo]

i just bought a 2.4A prescott to overclock, and to tell the truth, its not a hot processor.

The new heastsink that intel ships with them works fine, infact I overclocked it to 3.2 while I under volted it!

that said, i really preferr the Northwood processors - I have a 2.4C Northwood and its a great chip.


My vote, go northwood for now, its the best bang for the buck and a really worthwhile processor, you won:t be disapointed. Just make sure you get a really good motherboard, like a top of the line Abit or somehting, it can make all the difference

 

[wellsbeach]

yeah, I remember the TURBO button, Dx-66 I think.

Then came the wow, Pentium II. (grin).

But seriously, I''ve been using AMD for a while and the AMD64 is out of my reach. It seems that the intel might be a worthy contender. I haven't used intel since the 800 P3 BX chipset and although it's not 64 bits, I'm just trying to figure out what the best is for audio work.

This is where it gets tricky.

For the most part, Videographers will argue P4 optimized/rendering is great, and I agree, then, AUDIO people argue that AMD is better (more plug-ins) due to RAW FPU power.

For me, I think anything above the PC2100 RAM that I have will result in a significant boost.

However, still, others will argue 64 bits is hands down the best 32 bit chip out there due to low memory latency (on board controller) and low/cool temps (cool and quiet).

I guess, I should have stated something like, I don't want to spend more that $300.00 and yet upgrade my AMD 2400 XP and my 1 GIG of PC 2100 to a new motherboard, RAM (at least one gig) and CPU.

So...what to do? END RESULT for me is more plug-ins (audio).

thanks

 

[wellsbeach]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..

If I wanted to save a buck or two, wouldn't it be wise to get a AMD 64 2800 (cheapest) and this way I could upgrade to the FX down the road???

What is all the hoop ha about the 939 pin config???

This is out of my price range, so, what mother board is good for AMD 64 2800, yet can hold a FX series down the road?

thanks