PC Motherboard Recommendation?

[Mincer]

Heya all...I am building another PC DAW, and I would like some motherboard recommendations. It will be based around a 2.2 P4 chip, 2 hdd's (a 100gig, and a 20gig). I will be using Vegas Video 3 to record audio and sometimes simple video (the video would be web quality only), and the recording would be audio only, no midi. I would be using an Echo Mia card fed from my Mackie 1202vlz mixer. I play guitar & guitar synth, going direct using hardware effects and speaker simulators. I occasionally use software drum programs like Fruity Loops. Companies selling PCs for audio are rightfully not forthcoming about which motherboards they use, so if anyone one has ideas, please let me know! Thanks much!

[AcousticPro]

I'll state the main parameters you always want to pay attention to. If you're using Intel processors stick with an Intel Chipset. If you can avoid a board with built in audio that is always better as well. Get something with a good BIOS as well. Stick with who you know. Good companies like ASUS and Gigabyte are a safe bet, they are well established companies and make solid boards, there are others in this category as well, but these are just a couple.

[TeeCee]

You can get reviews/comparisons of various motherboards at http://www.tomshardware.com/ . You do have to decide whether or not you want to go with a DDR-SDRAM or RDRAM chip set/solution. About this time, Jeff should remind you that if you don't already know which chip set you want to go with, you stand to lose a lot of time figuring out which is the better choice - time that could be spent making music. And I would have to insert that as much as that sucks, leaving this decision to someone else usually means that ou will get what ever the masses are accepting. I would then tell you that the masses are generally uninformed. Hopefully you know the differences already and know what direction you want to go in.

What information I'll offer to you:
Intel seems to be basing it's future chip sets on DDR-SDRAM more and more
My motherboard favorites are ABIT and MSI.
Additional IDE ports, usually supplied via on-board RAID controllers, may help you to keep your IDE channels uncluttered. This is especially important when you have more than two hard drives or want all possible source options for burning CD-Rs.

Best of luck,

[MorturaryMan]

Try and steer clear of the VIA chipset if you plan on a AMD based system.
The AMD Northbridge chipsets are much better suited for pro-audio.

[TeeCee]

MorturaryMan claimed
Try and steer clear of the VIA chipset if you plan on a AMD based system.
The AMD Northbridge chipsets are much better suited for pro-audio.
Got anything to back this claim? Any test results or something?

[MorturaryMan]

Sure.....

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/7.html

[TeeCee]

MorturaryMan then replied
Sure.....

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/7.html
This does not compare the VIA north bridge to the AMD north bridge, does it? The AMD north bridge is based on VIA's design from a year or so back, anyway. Most users having problems with VIA chip sets seem to be using Sound Blaster sound cards. Oh well.

Scanning through the article, it would seem that the problem is in the south bridge which is common to both AMD and VIA chip sets.

I suggest that you try a VIA chip set with maybe an Athlon XP and see if you have issues or feel like telling the world about your smoking system.

[MorturaryMan]

Sure Bro

Hardware:

Computer 1
AMD XP2100+
1024mb 266mz DDR Ram
Gigabyte GA7-DXR+ Mobo with AMD 762 chipset
2 IBM Deskstar 60gig drives in RAID
Plextor 40X CDR
3com Ethernet
Aardvark Q10 sound card

Running:
Windows XP Pro
Cubase VST/32
Soundforge 6.0
Acid 3.0
Reaktor 3.0
Various DX and VST Plugs

Compter 2
1.4 gig Athlon
with 768mb of PC100 RAM
running GigaSampler
through a Waves PCI soundcard

Music gear:
Novation Supernova2 48 voice
Korg Wavestation
Proteus/1 module
Oberheim Matrix 6
Mackie 1202
MOTU Midi express XT
Furman AR-1215 voltage reg
QSC USA850 Amp
Yamaha NS-10M monitors
Line6 POD
Fender Jazzmaster
Roland VS1880 with both FX cards and Burner
various Sansamp and Boss pedals.
Roland SPD-11 MIDI drum pad


Umm...thats about it I guess. Thanks for the intrest :)

[MorturaryMan]

Oh yeah.....


The problem with the VIA northbidge chipset is that it has a slower PCI bus than other chipsets. Thus getting great performance out of your
PCI sound card is harder.....not impossible though.

Both Aarvark and Frontier recommended and going with a AMD
chipset over the VIA ( a VIA southbridge is supposed to be ok however).

[TeeCee]

So where's your actual problem? The speed of the PCI bus with VIA chipsets far smokes any audio interface out there. See some of my older posts for throughput requirements of say 8 channels of recording and playback. I'm just in town for a day and a half and I'm headed back out and I need to spend some time with my wife. The only potential problem will be with the addition of some PCI DSP cards and using PCI hard drive interfaces all together. You might then run into a problem with throughput, assuming your working with something like 30 tracks.

[AcousticPro]

TeeCee,

I could see some people running multiple card systems or an add-on such as a UAD1 card running into bandwidth issues. I agree that perhaps the audio itself happening on the bus may not cause a problem, but if you're running more it could be an issue, especially with a SCSI card or something in the system. Which is still preferred by many audio engineers for the performance with intense edits. Would you agree with this?

[TeeCee]

Jeff:
Absolutely. I would agree that this is a potential issue. And I will accept that you have seen it. And I do think it sucks.

I hope Serial ATA is all it's supposed to be. From what I've seen, it can still go either way. We can have a thread on Serial ATA and the DAW if you want. I can post what I've seen and read and hopefully someone can convince me that the same people that have screwed up every other new and interesting idea, will not screw this one up. More than likely, it will be weekly implemented with the option to buy third party controllers for more channels/connectors. Just like UDMA.

As for DSP cards, I upgraded from a Celeron 300a clocked at 450 to my Athlon XP 1600+ when I ran out of CPU working on a remix in Acid. Acid would hold my CPU meter at 100% for about a minute straight during playback of what was about a 6 minute song. With the Athlon, I peaked at something like 34%, staying below 26% most of the time. My answer to DSP cards is my CPU which pound for pound offers more than the P4's when it comes to floating point math, therefore I am less likely to need a DSP card if I use Athlons. I'd like to see how a dual processor platform with no DSP card compares to a single processor platform with a DSP card. As Win2000 and XP become more popular for PC-DAW's, a second processor may be a viable DSP card replacement (I know that 2 processors does not equal twice the horse power).

It's still a trade off as to what you need to do with your PC. If you can get your DAW built and supported with either brand CPU, the playing field is almost level. I do not recommend that everyone follow PCs the way you and I do. Too time consuming if you aren't into it. Intel has just made so many bad decisions in the last 2 years or so and I feel insulted by what they have asked me, Joe User, to accept. If you bought a P4 from someone like Dell or almost anyone at least 4 months ago, you probably got RDRAM. You probably got slower RDRAM than anyone had business selling to you. Now that Intel has awakened to what is reality, you will probably not be able to use that RAM in your next system. Intel is supposed to be reserving RDRAM usage for server chipsets only in the future. DDR SDRAM is their new standard for desktops. I realize that current RAM will always be faster than what you bought a year ago, but if I can recycle my slower RAM, I can afford an incremental upgrade.

[AcousticPro]

TeeCee,

I would love to see this as a thread and would appreciate you starting it if you feel led. That goes for anyone else. Feel free to do this in the future as well. For me the DSP is not a subsitute for a faster computer, but a compliment. Using your dual procesor as compared to single with DSP card. What would happen to the dual processor with the DSP card? You'd have more yet. Also, the UAD1 specifically offers the best algorithms for hardware that it's emulating than many of the host based plug-ins. So there are a couple of reasons I don't normally recommend VIA chipsets, but can make them work if necessary. Of course, it still has to translate to what you are doing with audio and it's ability to help you make music.

[NukleoN]

This is from the M-Audio website support FAQ for the Delta 1010:

Q: I own a AMD processor with a VIA chipset and am getting jitters when recording or when starting the windows machine .

This is usually due to VIA chipset with AMD processors and there are fixes from the two links listed beneath. The problems seems to stem from the USB in the BIOS being disabled plus there is a file you will need to download and run from one of these web sites.

http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index.htm or try this other site…

www.gainward.com

[TeeCee]

NukleoN:
Once again, this is old and something with a work around.If we steered clear of every product by every manufacturer that had an issue with some other product, we'd be sleeping naked in grass huts.

Besides, Intel has done more deliberately to keep people on the losing end of technology (forcing RDRAM as the only option for P4's, introducing a chip set capable of supporting DDR SDRAM but with that support disabled, suing the first company to offer a DDR chip set for P4's, making the first P4's much slower than the best P3's but selling for much more, introducing the 1.2GHz P3 even after Tom's Hardware showed that it was fatally flawed, all within the last 12 to 24 months) than VIA and AMD could ever do combined unintentionally.