Members weeman Posted December 20, 2009 Members Share Posted December 20, 2009 Basically i am trying to decide which route i want to take when building my next studio pc either AMD or Intel. My Options are a top of the line AMd rig or a Q8200 series intel rig with 12 gig of ram the only software i intend to run is protools! Many helps plz! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 My current PC is AMD based - I have a Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard, 4 GB of RAM and a Athlon 64 4200 X2 CPU. It was a screamer when I built it, and more cost effective than going with an Intel CPU, but at this time, I'm not sure I'll go with an AMD for my next DAW computer upgrade. At the moment, the Intel i7 seems to be the one to beat, and that's probably what I'll go with for my next build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nice keetee Posted December 20, 2009 Members Share Posted December 20, 2009 AMD plans to build a chip plant about 10 miles away from me, state has given them millions in tax breaks...we'll see... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted December 20, 2009 Members Share Posted December 20, 2009 My Options are a top of the line AMd rig or a Q8200 series intel rig. Either top of the line AMD(Phenom 2 X4 965) Or Intel i7 or i5. If you want to save money the i5 is surprisngly benching nearly as well as the i7 920 in DAW bench tests and can be had for as little as $150.00. Forget the Q8200. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BushmasterM4 Posted December 20, 2009 Members Share Posted December 20, 2009 Basically i am trying to decide which route i want to take when building my next studio pc either AMD or Intel. My Options are a top of the line AMd rig or a Q8200 series intel rig with 12 gig of ram the only software i intend to run is protools! Many helps plz! What version of Windows. You do know XP only uses up to 4 gigs of memory. To use more than that, you have to use Windows 7 or XP/Vista 64bit versions. I have a new Phenom II 955 (cpu only) coming in a couple days (should have it Tuesday). And Im going to do a load test vs. my current Phenom 9600 Quad Core 2.3ghtz and the 3.2ghtz Phenom II (DAW Test). Im hoping the added speed and architecture changes, will give me a few more tracks and or plugin count (at current latency settings). Next step is to create a Raid drive and see how that helps. Raid should help alot with track count from what Ive read. So I guess if your planning on upgrading be careful which OS you use and I would go ahead and set up a Raid system. Its not just the speed of the CPU you have to look at, but the whole thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 He said he is going to be running only Pro Tools - so he can't really use a RAID; Pro Tools doesn't support them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BushmasterM4 Posted December 21, 2009 Members Share Posted December 21, 2009 He said he is going to be running only Pro Tools - so he can't really use a RAID; Pro Tools doesn't support them. Instead of using a controller based Raid setup, would a Windows Software Raid set up work with Protools ? Im not familiar with Protools but I would think the Windows Software Raid would work, since all your Windows apps think the two drives are a single drive. Test show Software Raid to be almost as quick a controller based Raids. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members weeman Posted December 21, 2009 Author Members Share Posted December 21, 2009 Hem ATM amd isnt compatible with pro tools 8 from what digi say thats why i asked which?. Atm im looking at a Q8200/8400 8gigs of ram and windows 7. And just running pro tools 8 id care about other stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AluminumNeck Posted December 22, 2009 Members Share Posted December 22, 2009 I have protools on my home rig. Works fine with my AMD 9950 quad core machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members weeman Posted December 22, 2009 Author Members Share Posted December 22, 2009 I have protools on my home rig. Works fine with my AMD 9950 quad core machine. hay how good is the performance in 8? which motherboard did you choose? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members IsildursBane Posted December 22, 2009 Members Share Posted December 22, 2009 Instead of using a controller based Raid setup, would a Windows Software Raid set up work with Protools ? Im not familiar with Protools but I would think the Windows Software Raid would work, since all your Windows apps think the two drives are a single drive. Test show Software Raid to be almost as quick a controller based Raids. Could Pro Tools work with a software-based RAID-0? Yeah, possibly. I've done it w/ some (fairly non-intensive) projects and had it work fine. It being "not supported" doesn't mean that it won't ever work, just that they don't guarantee it to work and won't provide support in those cases. That said, why RAID? What's the point? Non-enterprise-level RAID is a bad idea for consumers - you get a performance boost, but at a greater risk of failure. If the controller fails, the whole thing fails. With RAID-0, if one drive fails, the whole thing fails. With other RAID levels, maybe you can rebuild it, maybe you can't. For most of the people on this board, they won't be exceeding the capabilities of their hd's anyways, so there's no need for it. But if they are reaching that limit, PT has its own disk allocation settings that allow you to write files to multiple drives, giving you some of the benefits of striping w/o the same risks. -Dan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members weeman Posted December 22, 2009 Author Members Share Posted December 22, 2009 Either top of the line AMD(Phenom 2 X4 965) Or Intel i7 or i5. If you want to save money the i5 is surprisngly benching nearly as well as the i7 920 in DAW bench tests and can be had for as little as $150.00. Forget the Q8200. i5 has 4 cores 4 threads and some new tech. Q series has 4 cores 4 threads and is alot freaking cheaper in building costs. Current protools uses core 2 duo stuff neways So an i5 could be too much of a boost due too the cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BushmasterM4 Posted December 22, 2009 Members Share Posted December 22, 2009 Could Pro Tools work with a software-based RAID-0? Yeah, possibly. I've done it w/ some (fairly non-intensive) projects and had it work fine. It being "not supported" doesn't mean that it won't ever work, just that they don't guarantee it to work and won't provide support in those cases.That said, why RAID? What's the point? Non-enterprise-level RAID is a bad idea for consumers - you get a performance boost, but at a greater risk of failure. If the controller fails, the whole thing fails. With RAID-0, if one drive fails, the whole thing fails. With other RAID levels, maybe you can rebuild it, maybe you can't. For most of the people on this board, they won't be exceeding the capabilities of their hd's anyways, so there's no need for it. But if they are reaching that limit, PT has its own disk allocation settings that allow you to write files to multiple drives, giving you some of the benefits of striping w/o the same risks.-Dan. Any drive can fail at any time. I always make backups of my stuff from time to time. Does anyone know how many tracks a single hard drive can stream ? Just out of couriosity ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BushmasterM4 Posted December 22, 2009 Members Share Posted December 22, 2009 Here is a little bit of info from another site concerning data rates and tracks. Dont know if its accurate and it uses older ATA as a reference. "First of all a ATA100 hard drive cannot sustain the theoretical transfer rate of 100 MB a second....When buying a hard drive look at the AVERAGE SUSTAINED / LOW PEAK transfer rate. This value will be a more realistic value to go by. Manufacturers very rarely print this spec on the product. Visiting the web site can usually find the figure or sometimes a phone call to tech support is needed. To have a DAW that can reliably do 16 tracks of 16bit / 44.1Khz audio your hard drive will need to be able to sustain 2MB per second of throughput or more. Modern Drives can supply 12MB / sec or more which can deliver approximately 60 - 80 tracks of audio at 24bit 44.1Khz." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted December 23, 2009 Members Share Posted December 23, 2009 i5 has 4 cores 4 threads and some new tech. Q series has 4 cores 4 threads and is alot freaking cheaper in building costs. No difference in price at all. Both go for $149.00 at New Egg and Microcenter. The new i series incorperates the on board memory controller similar to AMD and kills the older Q series big time. For the same price why waste your money on under performing old technology? Current protools uses core 2 duo stuff neways So an i5 could be too much of a boost due too the cost. I'm pretty sure PT uses all 4 cores these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 23, 2009 Share Posted December 23, 2009 Yes, PT 8 can use multiple cores, although with some plugins (such as the SSL Duende stuff), leaving one core unassigned to PT is recommended. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members weeman Posted December 23, 2009 Author Members Share Posted December 23, 2009 Atm i can afford an i7 series quad but i'm unsure about Protools 8's future or current compatibility. The Q series stuff is alot cheaper now and i could spec up an 8 gig rig at current costs. I am ignoring i5 because it seems worthless and already redundant. I really was thinking AMD because i could afford the best rig available but i'm unsure because digi write no on the tin as it were. Cheers for all the reply's guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MrJoshua Posted December 23, 2009 Members Share Posted December 23, 2009 Why does i5 seem worthless? It's basically an i7 with hyperthreading turned off and a lower price. Anyway, i5 or i7 would be the way to go if you can afford it. If you want to be sure you're compatible with Pro Tools, though, check out the Digidesign Users' Conference at duc.digidesign.com and read through some of the threads dealing with the Core i7/i5 stuff. You'll find everything from motherboard recommendations to settings to tweak your operating system for maximum performance. Great resource for a Pro Tools user. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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