Music, Sweet Music

[buckmoy]

Hello everyone. If you have minute to help me I will be really chuffed.

Can anyone recommend a decent board / processor / graphics card combo? My budget is high high! Need a good one. Undecided as to AMD / Pent. (I hear the new AMD XPs aren't so good, and get hot - seeing as my PC is for tunes, the fans needs to be quiet..)

What I do know is this:

I am looking for a board with USB 2.0 and Firewire in, but no built in Sound Card (I have a few high spec cards already).

I am not sure whether to get the graphics card on the board or not (eg the Nforce 2 with built in GeForce 4).

I REALLY appreciate any time / help. I know what its like being a regular to a board, and every so often some lamo comes along and posts another dumb question - and if you had a dollar for each time they did that you'd be rich etc etc.


Thanks, B

 

[xeenrecoil]

Heya Buckmoy;

You have come to the right place, there are lost of dedicated people who post on here and are willing to really help you out.

With that in mind i would suggest you start with a solid foundation, your computer core is the most important part of your computer, the core consists of the following.

Motherboard, CPU, and Ram, in that order.

The Motherboard is the most important piece of hardware, for it is the foundation that the rest of your computer is built on, buy the best mobo you can get, i would reccomend Asus, Specifically a deluxe model with Dual channel DDR, Asus is hands down the best!

Now for CPU i would suggest you buy a pentium 4 with 800Mhz FSB, that thing is a monster, it chews up programs and spits them out, hyperthreading is phenominal, and the multimedia capability is unmatched.

As for memory buy samsung from AIB, goto http://www.buyaib.com and check out their OCed ram, select option-C and pay the extra $15 per module, that gives you the CL-2 option and it is worth the money.

As far as Graphics card i reccomend the Asus v9280S-tvd this thing is a monster, it is 20 percent faster then the generic ti4200, and you wont be dissapointed, it is a phenominal card, and it is reasonably priced too.

I always buy Retail components, pay the extra money for the warranty, you will appreaciate it if a peice of hardware ever fails.

it is always important to remember that your computer is only as fast as its weakest component.

Repeat after me "PriceWatch is my friend" heheh
goto http://www.pricewatch.com

I hope i have Helped.

XeeN

 

[david__t]

Purely from an upgradability point of view a pentium 4 would be better than an Athlon XP because AMD are moving to a new socket type in a few months making all current boards useless for upgrading purposes.

The P4 is currently the fastest CPU and if you have much cash then the 3.06 GHZ HT enabled model will do you very well indeed. Music processing needs quite a bit of CPU power after all. Just make sure that you get some good RAM to go with it and run Windows XP to make full use of the memory.

You will be struggling to find a motherboard that has no onboard sound but they can always be disabled anyway. In the past boards with no onboard sound were not really cheaper. If you look hard enough you might be able to get a board with 6 PCI slots. Obviously I would recommend ASUS (P4C800) for any motherboard and maybe MSI as well.

As far as graphics, what are your needs? Trying to buy a board with onboard graphics will severly limit your choices. If you intend to play the latest games (Half Life 2 and Doom 3) then you want at least a DX9 compatible card and if you have loads of cash then why not get a Radeon 9800 / 9700 pro? Otherwise the Geforce FX 5200 would be a good choice but I would definitely say that DX9 compatibility is essential even if you are not heavily in to games - it will just make your PC a bit more future proof. Note that reviews have shown that 256MB is no better then 128MB of video RAM so don't go wasting money on that needlessly.

4.77MHz to 4.0GHz in 10 years. Imagine the space year 2020

 

[jlanka]

because AMD are moving to a new socket type in a few months making all current boards useless for upgrading purposes

you talkin 'bout A64? I've been waiting and waiting for the release of that thing. Let's go AMD! pull the trigger already!

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[jlanka]

Found some info on <A HREF="http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-1018579.html" target="_new">Athlon64</A> release date

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[buckmoy]

thanks very much for you help.