Members piano39 Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 I have to upgrade my Windows 98 PC. Actually, I guess I have to throw it out. Amybody out there using a Celeron processor to record audio? I probably will buy a new box with a Celeron 2.5 GHZ processor, Windows XP etc. ~$400 total. A Pentium IV machine costs a few hundred more. Can I get away with the Celeron? Running Sonar, Delta 44 interface. Tx, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lanstar Zero Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 Celeron's are not recommended .. I'm pretty sure mainly because of the cache size. Why not get an Athlon XP? You can get a nice athlon processor for cheap... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mytee2.0 Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 I believe the newer cellies have much bigger cache sizes then the originals. Not 100% sure though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeez Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 I reccomend an AMD Athlon XP processor. They have very strong floating-point performance, which is useful for audio processing. Forever, Kim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Is. Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 Stay away from celerons. They are total POS (very small L2 cache - very poor performance). For the same price as a celeron, you can get an AMD Athlon XP that will trounce a Celeron in every way. Even a Duron pretty much poops on a Celeron. Read - http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927 Of course, it goes without saying that you'll get a much better PC for the $ if you build your own, especially if you recycle useable parts from your current rig (at least the CD-ROM and floppy drives, maybe the video card if you don't game, probably the case you can keep). For example (assuming you can keep case, floppy + CD-ROM, and video card), $400 will get you 512MB of Mushkin PC3200 DDR, WinXP, a nice quiet seagate 80GB hard drive w/ 8MB cache, an Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton), and a good motherboard (something with an nForce 2 chipset is good for AMD). Any PC you buy off the shelf for $400 is going to suck. It will have some slow, lame HD, a wack processor, slow generic RAM, a motherboard with some {censored}ty chipset, etc. They select components carefully so that the numbers the average consumer looks at will match up (i.e. you might have same amount of RAM, same MHz processor, same size HD, etc.), but the performance will be nowhere close. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members cheptronics Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 the best solution is to buy the cheapest Athlon or Pentium IVyou should find a 2.4 GHz for 50-60 euros, it's better than a 3 GHz Celeron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members scubyfan Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 No, avoid them. Get an AMD Athlon XP Barton chip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members midi Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 Actually, P4 & Celeron are the same exact 478 pin chip, 'cept the 'ron has 128 L2 cache and 512k on the P4. Works fine for internet but a little bit slower for gaming/graphics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mytee2.0 Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 having the same pinset in no way means they are the same. the P4 and the celleron are VERY different Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members noonehere Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 If you decide to "built it yourself", I would suggest considering NewEgg for your parts as they are VERY reputable and the prices are good. Also, check prices via PriceWatch to get an idea of average prices. Keep in mind that not everyone in PriceWatch is "reputable". If you choose to use one of those vendors, be sure to check them in Reseller Ratings before purchasing. Personally, I would recommend something like an Asus A7N8X (pick a flavor, maybe an A7N8X-X?) and an AMD Athalon XP 2800+ or 3000+ (which have the best price point right now). For memory and hard drive, I would shop the weekend flyers for chain stores as these regularly sell for ridiculous prices "AFTER REBATES", but you must diligently complete the rebates. They will come, but will take a few months. If not, check out HP Shopping as they carry AMD processors and offer a fair deal on a new system. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Styrerra Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 Even an Athlon barton 2500+ rocks. And should be the minimum at least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sevensinner Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 Originally posted by myteeGTi having the same pinset in no way means they are the same.the P4 and the celleron are VERY different Well depends on what you mean by "VERY." They are essentialy castrated versions of the premium product. Current Celerons are based on the Northwood core, but are stuck running at a lower front side bus speed, along with 1/4 the L2 cache. Either way Celeron performance is all relative to what you have right now. If you're going from say, a Celeron 433 based HP Pavillion from 1998, anything today is going to be considerably faster. Since you (orginal poster) are running Sonar, get a Pentium 4 or better yet, an AthlonXP based system for "bang for the buck" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Is. Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 Originally posted by noonehere For memory and hard drive, I would shop the weekend flyers for chain stores as these regularly sell for ridiculous prices "AFTER REBATES", but you must diligently complete the rebates. They will come, but will take a few months. I personally would recommend aginst this as a general rule, because usually the types of RAM and HD sold for those huge rebates isn't what I'd call quality stuff (DAW performance is heavily dependent on HD and RAM performance, also you don't want any component failure from cheap parts, *especially* not the HD)...but it all depends. If you see good, name brand stuff with a good rebate, it's a no-brainer, go for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mytee2.0 Posted April 24, 2004 Members Share Posted April 24, 2004 yeah, DONT buy no name cheapo memory and hardrives. Youd be really surpirsed on how much performance you can gain with a nice harddrive. buy corsair memory and western digital HDs with the 8meg cache. Thats what im running and I love it. going with a raid setup is also nice Originally posted by sevensinner ...Celeron 433 based HP Pavillion from 1998, anything today is going to be considerably faster.... that was my last computer celly 433 with 128 megs -> P4 2.4 w 1024 megs you cant go wrong with going with either AMD or intel (P4, no celly) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members heroesforghosts Posted April 25, 2004 Members Share Posted April 25, 2004 I just got a new pc last week,an AMD Athlon 2700,2.16GHz,256Mb ram,winXP,with dvd-rom,cd-rw,80GB Western Digital hd. My p3 500 MHz pc died,just after I put in a new 80GB Maxtor hd.I took the Maxtor out and installed it in my new rig,so I have 2 80GB hd's,plenty of room for storage. I wiped the Maxtor hd,so there's no os. Am I correct in assuming that I need to have an os installed on the 2nd hd(maxtor)? I've never used a system with 2 hd's,so I'm not sure how to set it up. I plan on using the 2nd hd for storage of music files. I've already voided the warranty by installing a scsi card and an Audiophile 24/96,but these are needed. I am using Logic Platinum 4.6, Cubasis VST,Cakewalk 8(hey,it still works!),Acid 4.0,Sound Forge 6.0,Cool Edit Pro,Abelton 3.0,Vegas 4.0,and a few other things like Virtual Sampler,Wavelab. Now my machine tells my that my floppy drive won't work until I free up resources,which puzzles me,since my P3,500MHz machine ran everything with no problems,in fact I've had 3 different soundcards in the p3 machine without conflicts occuring. Do I need to configure my cache size to accomodate my current setup? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members scubyfan Posted April 25, 2004 Members Share Posted April 25, 2004 You only need to install the operating system on the boot hard drive; your storage hard drive doesn't need one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Analog Kid Posted April 25, 2004 Members Share Posted April 25, 2004 When i decided to get into softsynths i went the dyi route it was a bit of a nightmare, but that was my fault entirely (well, actually i think jamille blew my first CPU) I went to a mid level set up, and right now im planning out a top of the line My case is MicroATX, which focuses my choices... this might be a good thing with the sheer number of hardware options out there I've come from a TRS-80, to Apple II to Macintosh background, and only got my first PC about the year 2000, got my first pro soundcard only a matter of months ago. I'm still a newbie, but the crash course in reality I've had as a result of my work has taught me some useful things. my latest good idea... dont install anything you dont need, I yanked the CD drives and floppy out of my system, i only use 1 hard drive (i dont track, so that's fine for me) I've actually been simply sticking in a HD to transfer with, using it like removable media, for instance last night i swapped about 18gigs worth of samples and other data... i might succumb and put in a nice card reader though, it shouldnt take much juice Then of course i have another PC for burning and the internet. Take these extras out of your computer... they add heat and noise and why do you even need them on a studio machine? Powerful graphics cards add heat too, and all this stuff also means your shopping for a big bad PSU that can supply a {censored}load of ram, a P4 and all these gizmo's Bigger PSU-- more noise and heat My current rig is a Soyo mobo with an Athlon 2400+, 512mb generic ram, 133mhz bus, Korg Oasys soundcard It runs most things very well, but i can still send it into a panic with a few of the poly patches from MoogModular or some of the absolutely crazy ensembles in Reaktor Now it's time to upgrade to the best hardware money can buy I'm looking at SilenX and Zalmen as the best solutions to kill the noise I'm looking at an ASUS board with a 3.2 P4, 800mhz bus... i cant take advantage of hyperthreading cause i use 98, but no biggie I'll stick the best ram i can find... i cant find any 1g sticks i guess they arent available yet? So my budget to completely replace the entire computer inside my case (not the Oasys obviously) is $500ish, give or take depending on what i do with ram, but this figure represents the best hardware i could find, so seems like a good value I feel a lot more confident now about DYI, theres no reason i should have even a full day of downtime with this upgrade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Is. Posted April 25, 2004 Members Share Posted April 25, 2004 Originally posted by Analog Kid Now it's time to upgrade to the best hardware money can buy I'm looking at SilenX and Zalmen as the best solutions to kill the noise I'm looking at an ASUS board with a 3.2 P4, 800mhz bus... i cant take advantage of hyperthreading cause i use 98, but no biggie I'll stick the best ram i can find... i cant find any 1g sticks i guess they arent available yet? Okay, first off, I wouldn't get too attached to that MicroATX case. Cases are cheap, and you're looking at top of the line, which kind of makes it silly to look at anything but ATX. Which asus board? I have a P4P800 deluxe, it's a nice board. The P4C800 is even nicer, of course. Hyperthreading is rather worthless, IMHO. I haven't been able to measure any performance difference in any of the apps I use whether HT is enabled or not. Maybe it's cool with dual CPUs, I don't know. 1Gb sticks exist - http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-208-125&depa=0 There are many others, but much of the 1Gb RAM out there is ECC registered, slow clock speed stuff, probably for servers I guess. But 2x512MB is a better option for you anyway, because then you can run in dual channel mode, for huge performance increases (basically 2x the bandwidth). I'd recommend against more than 1Gb of RAM at this point, you really won't need more than that in the near future, and using more RAM slots than necessary actually slows down your system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members noonehere Posted April 25, 2004 Members Share Posted April 25, 2004 Originally posted by Is. I personally would recommend aginst this as a general rule, because usually the types of RAM and HD sold for those huge rebates isn't what I'd call quality stuff (DAW performance is heavily dependent on HD and RAM performance, also you don't want any component failure from cheap parts, *especially* not the HD)...but it all depends. If you see good, name brand stuff with a good rebate, it's a no-brainer, go for it. Sorry, I probably should have added that caveat. I see WesternDigital Special Edition (ATA100, 8MB Cache) and Crucial and Kingston memory (Infineon chipsets, the good stuff) on sale at silly prices all the time. It seems to be a once a month push, then junk deals for the other three weeks. Circuit City and Staples seem to be the masters of this (liteon DVD+- RW for $29(100 worth of rebates)). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members noonehere Posted April 25, 2004 Members Share Posted April 25, 2004 Originally posted by heroesforghosts Am I correct in assuming that I need to have an os installed on the 2nd hd(maxtor)? I've never used a system with 2 hd's,so I'm not sure how to set it up. No, you must partition and format the drive, but that is all. It is all personal preference, but most would say all one large partition formatted FAT32. Originally posted by heroesforghosts Now my machine tells my that my floppy drive won't work until I free up resources,which puzzles me,since my P3,500MHz machine ran everything with no problems,in fact I've had 3 different soundcards in the p3 machine without conflicts occuring. Do I need to configure my cache size to accomodate my current setup? You need to find out what is conflicting with the floppy drive controller. Something is using the resources it needs. The Floppy Controller settings are in the BIOS and are usually hard set (not PNP). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members heroesforghosts Posted April 26, 2004 Members Share Posted April 26, 2004 Thanks AK and Noonehere. I tried using my floppy today,and it tells me that something else is using the same IRQ-6,and I haven't done anything to it. I did install an M-Audio 24/96 and a scsi card,but neither use the same memory locations.The only thing I can think of is the Cubasis VST,because when I check the conflict list in system manager,it tells me something called TPkd is using IRQ-6 as well. When I check to find out what the hell TPkd is,it has a diamond logo next to it,the same diamond that Cubasis VST uses for a logo. I don't really need Cubasis,since I have Logic and Cakewalk,so I might as well uninstall it. Once again,thanks for the help with my hd storage question. The funny part is,I just used the floppy drive 2 days ago and it worked fine,after I installed everything. Go figure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members air cut light Posted April 26, 2004 Members Share Posted April 26, 2004 The important thing to remember is you can *record* on a really really crappy computer and still have okay results. There's certainly problems with running slower machines, but I recorded half of my band's last album on a Celeron 333. Sure, it sucked; I only had a 6 gig harddrive, but if recording is a big enough priority, then you can make it work. I guess what I'm saying is, DON'T USE CRAPPY EQUIPMENT AS AN EXCUSE NOT TO CREATE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members noonehere Posted April 26, 2004 Members Share Posted April 26, 2004 Originally posted by heroesforghosts ... it tells me something called TPkd is using IRQ-6 as well. Aha, there lies the culprit! Read the problem and fix at this website:http://support.installshield.com/kb/view.asp?articleid=Q106005 It all comes down to "anti-piracy registration software". I'm guessing that it is a "dongle" (hardware key) driver that fubars the system. Luckily, they posted a workaround.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Etienne Rambert Posted April 27, 2004 Members Share Posted April 27, 2004 I've recorded on Celerons for years. I'll keep recording on them. This was recorded on a Celeron."Shijun" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Is. Posted April 27, 2004 Members Share Posted April 27, 2004 Originally posted by marcellis I've recorded on Celerons for years. I'll keep recording on them. Marcellis, your music (as well as your other artistic endeavors) is phenominal, and I'm not going to try and tell you it would be better if you used a different processor. I will simply say that the Celerons represent a poor value in the PC processor market, when other processors for the same price or less perform better, consistently across the board. Does one need that extra power? Some do, some (like you) don't. And while some would consider it an asset to be able to acheive the same results with less power, it's kind of silly not to have that extra power, if it doesn't cost any more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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