Hello,
I'm budgeting a new computer, in the view to get more & more audio tracks (system dedicated to audio recording/sequencing). My current system will be used as an external effect/synth rack, and both systems will be linked by ADAT i/o and Midi/Smpte if synchro is needed.
I have understod that it is better to go to Chipset 845 , due to better support for 533 and DDRam, which is cheaper and still fast ram (compared to my current sdram). I've read good things about 845G.
Budget is important, but stability and no problemos are more important, so i prefer cheaper/less fast but more stable. I even prefer not to upgrade if there are problems.
From what i read the following configuration seems good :
- P4 northwood 2 GB
- MotherBoard : Asus p4b533-V (or another ?)
or may be the asus p4B-LS (with included uw-scsi). Or may be if there's a p4b533 G with included display drivers (to save a graphic card, not needed here).
- Ram : DDR exclusively (up to 2Gb)
- box : Antec 350W
I think i'll put a luna 2, and i'll add my pulsar 1 to it.
Cubase whatever, but for the moment vst5+win98 se is the champion all categories with VST, compared to XPpro (i hate tweaking)
Thanks in advance for reviews/advices etc, especially if you have experience with p4
(i use cusl-2c+pIII1gb+512mb ram and all is fine, but i need a lot more audio tracks and cpu ressource headroom).
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2002-06-24 03:36 ]</font>
P4 and motherboard 845 chipset
I'm on an asus p4b266 with a northwood P4 1.8 running XP home and a PulsarII. For me XP has been way more stable than Win98SE. I had all sorts of 98 problems (none of them show-stoppers, but all of them annoying), but with XP it's been smooth. I did very few XP tweaks - in fact I haven't even touched the services thing. But since it's running so smoothly why bother ?
I also run a lot of mainstream graphics programs (photoshop, the macromedia MX suite etc) as well as various audio apps and life is good.
Hurrah for XP I say.
If only I had equal confidence in SFP 3.1 - my system's so smooth I'm far too frightened to risk the stability by upgrading !
I also run a lot of mainstream graphics programs (photoshop, the macromedia MX suite etc) as well as various audio apps and life is good.
Hurrah for XP I say.
If only I had equal confidence in SFP 3.1 - my system's so smooth I'm far too frightened to risk the stability by upgrading !
I built a system for a friend based around a Luna II on a Asus P4B266 board and Intel 2ghz (Northwood 400mhz FSB),512mb CAS 2.5 ddr-ram. Aside from a few native plugins giving the dreaded "p4 cpu spike" problem, the system is running flawlessly for about a month now.
Personally, I just ordered these parts for myself, they should be here in a couple days:
Asus P4B533 i845E board
Intel 2.4ghz (Northwood 533mhz FSB)
512mb Corsair CAS 2 ddr-ram
I have no doubt this will be a great running system. For DAW purposes, the 845 chipsets seem really good, many people have tested them in real world situations and highly recommend them.
As per articles on Tomshardware and Anandtech, Rambus is no longer used on Intel's roadmap for 2003. High end P4 setups are using DDR based solutions, so looks like Intel has some great new boards comming out the end of this year or early next year. DDR333 seems like a safe investment right now.
- sinix
Personally, I just ordered these parts for myself, they should be here in a couple days:
Asus P4B533 i845E board
Intel 2.4ghz (Northwood 533mhz FSB)
512mb Corsair CAS 2 ddr-ram
I have no doubt this will be a great running system. For DAW purposes, the 845 chipsets seem really good, many people have tested them in real world situations and highly recommend them.
As per articles on Tomshardware and Anandtech, Rambus is no longer used on Intel's roadmap for 2003. High end P4 setups are using DDR based solutions, so looks like Intel has some great new boards comming out the end of this year or early next year. DDR333 seems like a safe investment right now.
- sinix
-
gentleharp
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2002 4:00 pm
Sinix
How is this system running for you? I'm looking to upgrade and this is similar to what I've been pricing. (I'm considering the P4sB533 -- any problem with SiS MuTIOL technology?)
[quote]
Personally, I just ordered these parts for myself, they should be here in a couple days:
Asus P4B533 i845E board
Intel 2.4ghz (Northwood 533mhz FSB)
512mb Corsair CAS 2 ddr-ram
How is this system running for you? I'm looking to upgrade and this is similar to what I've been pricing. (I'm considering the P4sB533 -- any problem with SiS MuTIOL technology?)
[quote]
Personally, I just ordered these parts for myself, they should be here in a couple days:
Asus P4B533 i845E board
Intel 2.4ghz (Northwood 533mhz FSB)
512mb Corsair CAS 2 ddr-ram
Gentleharp:
I *love* this system! It's been very stable and I've had little to no problems at all.
Personally (along with many guys here), I'm an Intel guy through and through. This isn't to say other chip makers (SiS & VIA) don't make good products, it's just to say Intel works. Period.
I did have some initial setup problems that at the time seemed very serious. I had this USB issue that caused crashes whenever WinXP loaded. These issues were totally *MY* fault. There are some USB 2.0 drivers that have to be installed in a very specific order... I wasn't doing this correctly. After I figured this out, it's been totally smooth sailing. I also had a D.O.A. Western Digital drive that the BIOS failed to show.
Whenever I buy new drives in pairs (three times in a row now), one of them is ALWAYS dead. This has happened with Maxtor, WD, and IBM. Just my luck... go figure.
My final configuration is:
Asus P4B533
Intel 2.4(533) Boxed (retail)
2x 512mb Corsair XMS CAS 2 DDR
2x WD 120GB JB Drives
Nvidia Geforce2 32mb AGP
Sony CR1640 CDRW
Linksys NIC
Creamware Pulsar II
Steinberg Midex8
AMS gTower Case
Anatech 380W PSU
I'd be happy to answer any other questions if you need me to.
- sinix
I *love* this system! It's been very stable and I've had little to no problems at all.
Personally (along with many guys here), I'm an Intel guy through and through. This isn't to say other chip makers (SiS & VIA) don't make good products, it's just to say Intel works. Period.
I did have some initial setup problems that at the time seemed very serious. I had this USB issue that caused crashes whenever WinXP loaded. These issues were totally *MY* fault. There are some USB 2.0 drivers that have to be installed in a very specific order... I wasn't doing this correctly. After I figured this out, it's been totally smooth sailing. I also had a D.O.A. Western Digital drive that the BIOS failed to show.
Whenever I buy new drives in pairs (three times in a row now), one of them is ALWAYS dead. This has happened with Maxtor, WD, and IBM. Just my luck... go figure.
My final configuration is:
Asus P4B533
Intel 2.4(533) Boxed (retail)
2x 512mb Corsair XMS CAS 2 DDR
2x WD 120GB JB Drives
Nvidia Geforce2 32mb AGP
Sony CR1640 CDRW
Linksys NIC
Creamware Pulsar II
Steinberg Midex8
AMS gTower Case
Anatech 380W PSU
I'd be happy to answer any other questions if you need me to.
- sinix
-
gentleharp
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2002 4:00 pm
Sinx: Isn't it great when a plan finally comes together 
I had already ordered parts for my new daw configuration (very similar to yours):
Asus P4B533-e
Intel 2.4(533)
512mb Crucial CAS 2 DDR
2nd Seagate hd 80gig (to work with my original one)
Parts should arrive in the next couple of days. I'm basically upgrading my current daw which has worked well, but the prices for the new stuff is too hard to resist.
Thanks for the tip on the USB 2.0 -- I'll watch my steps
Happy musical computing
I had already ordered parts for my new daw configuration (very similar to yours):
Asus P4B533-e
Intel 2.4(533)
512mb Crucial CAS 2 DDR
2nd Seagate hd 80gig (to work with my original one)
Parts should arrive in the next couple of days. I'm basically upgrading my current daw which has worked well, but the prices for the new stuff is too hard to resist.
Thanks for the tip on the USB 2.0 -- I'll watch my steps
Happy musical computing
Guys,
Here's a copy of my post on the Yahoo Pulsar group. The USB 2 problem is solved with XP SP1.
Also note that I got away with using DDR333 memory with the P4B533-V.
Everything seems OK so far.....
====== copy of my post to Yahoo group =======
Well, I bit the bullit yesterday and upgraded my trusty Asus CUSL2
mobo to a Asus P4B533-V w/ 1GB DDR333 (PC2700) DDRAM and a P4 2.4 MHz.
Here's how it went, and the lessons I learned - if this saves anyone
some aggravation or anxiety, then the post was worth it.
The mobo swap was pretty straightforward, and the thing booted up
fine. The P4533-V (I'll tell you why I chose this in a minute) has in
built graphics, but it seems to ignore them automatically if you
install a graphics card. I got a cheap Gainward (never heard of them)
GeForce GF4 MX420 card w/64MB, and it booted up fine.
Windows XP wasn't happy though. It bluescreened and refused to boot -
even in safe mode. I re-installed XP over the top of both of my
partitions (music and "normal"), and I was pleasantly surprised to
learn that all my settings and programs were intact (there was a
choice in the install to "repair" the windows installation that it
found on the disk) - and it booted up fine. I just had to install
video drivers from CD. I was happy that I didn't have to re-install
XP "fresh" and reinstall everything else. I -did- have to reactivate
though, but there were no problems with either partition.
I had read an article in tomshardware.com, that although DDR333
memory isn't officially supported on this mobo, they had it working,
and they published the test results. I decided to give it a try.
First I flashed the BIOS up to the latest version - 1004 - which is
the one they used in the article. I'm pretty sure I got the DDR 333
memory set up correctly. There's no way to
tell for sure, but in the BIOS, the "CPU external frequency" is
133MHz - then I set "CPU/Memory requency ratio" to 5:4. this should
set the memory buss to 166MHz, and I should be running DDR 333!
The 5:4 setting shouldn't even be there if it's not possible on the
mobo (according to the manual).
I also bought a new Luna II to augment my Pulsar I. It arrived on
Thurs, so I registered it's serial number on the Creamware site, and
this took place immediately, and I had new keys generated which
included the Luna and Pulsar.
I had also ordered a STDM cable from scv in London, stuck the cards
in slots 2 and 4, hooked them up with the STDM cable, and set both
slots for IRQ 10 in BIOS.
Since I already had SFP 3.1c installed on my disk, the luna installed
easily, and I can now see the 7 dsps from both cards. Best of all, I
can now set the ULLI to 3ms (instead of the 25ms that is the lowest
Pulsar I can go). This chaned the block size in cset.ini (it's called
initblk?) from 512 down to 64.
This changed my SONAR settings too. Now the SONAR latency slider goes
down to 1.5ms where 11.6ms used to be the lowest it would go. I had
been running SONAR at 11.6ms with SFP 3.1c, but now I seem to be able
to get it to 8.3ms - anything lower is instant dropout. This is still
very acceptable, and I'n now (finally) confident that the next
drivers will be even better.
since I'm only used to 4 dsps, I only use the STS5000 and a mixer. I
know I'm not stressing the PCI buss, so I can't tell if I've got the
problems Shayne is seeing. To be honest, I'll probably just stick to
directx plugs, and the occasional DXi xsynth, and leave the
Pulsar/Luna as it is.
I haven't tested it too thoroughly in SONAR, and I won't do much this
week as I have to study for a test (for work blah blah) - but I'll
let you know if I see any problems.
Oh yeah - I also put XP SP1 on. This has the USB2 drivers so you
don't have to fart around with the "fix" in the Asus addendum to the
manual (that tells you you'll screww up your XP installation if you
don't do these 3 things exactly right)
Initial results are very good though. It took a while to install the
mobo, and a new power suppply, re-install XP twice, install the
Pulsar/Luna and LAN card, set the BIOS, flash it, install SP1 twice,
play with SONAR etc etc. - but it all went pretty well.
Sorry bout the long post - but maybe someone can pick up a few tips
from this.
John Braner
Here's a copy of my post on the Yahoo Pulsar group. The USB 2 problem is solved with XP SP1.
Also note that I got away with using DDR333 memory with the P4B533-V.
Everything seems OK so far.....
====== copy of my post to Yahoo group =======
Well, I bit the bullit yesterday and upgraded my trusty Asus CUSL2
mobo to a Asus P4B533-V w/ 1GB DDR333 (PC2700) DDRAM and a P4 2.4 MHz.
Here's how it went, and the lessons I learned - if this saves anyone
some aggravation or anxiety, then the post was worth it.
The mobo swap was pretty straightforward, and the thing booted up
fine. The P4533-V (I'll tell you why I chose this in a minute) has in
built graphics, but it seems to ignore them automatically if you
install a graphics card. I got a cheap Gainward (never heard of them)
GeForce GF4 MX420 card w/64MB, and it booted up fine.
Windows XP wasn't happy though. It bluescreened and refused to boot -
even in safe mode. I re-installed XP over the top of both of my
partitions (music and "normal"), and I was pleasantly surprised to
learn that all my settings and programs were intact (there was a
choice in the install to "repair" the windows installation that it
found on the disk) - and it booted up fine. I just had to install
video drivers from CD. I was happy that I didn't have to re-install
XP "fresh" and reinstall everything else. I -did- have to reactivate
though, but there were no problems with either partition.
I had read an article in tomshardware.com, that although DDR333
memory isn't officially supported on this mobo, they had it working,
and they published the test results. I decided to give it a try.
First I flashed the BIOS up to the latest version - 1004 - which is
the one they used in the article. I'm pretty sure I got the DDR 333
memory set up correctly. There's no way to
tell for sure, but in the BIOS, the "CPU external frequency" is
133MHz - then I set "CPU/Memory requency ratio" to 5:4. this should
set the memory buss to 166MHz, and I should be running DDR 333!
The 5:4 setting shouldn't even be there if it's not possible on the
mobo (according to the manual).
I also bought a new Luna II to augment my Pulsar I. It arrived on
Thurs, so I registered it's serial number on the Creamware site, and
this took place immediately, and I had new keys generated which
included the Luna and Pulsar.
I had also ordered a STDM cable from scv in London, stuck the cards
in slots 2 and 4, hooked them up with the STDM cable, and set both
slots for IRQ 10 in BIOS.
Since I already had SFP 3.1c installed on my disk, the luna installed
easily, and I can now see the 7 dsps from both cards. Best of all, I
can now set the ULLI to 3ms (instead of the 25ms that is the lowest
Pulsar I can go). This chaned the block size in cset.ini (it's called
initblk?) from 512 down to 64.
This changed my SONAR settings too. Now the SONAR latency slider goes
down to 1.5ms where 11.6ms used to be the lowest it would go. I had
been running SONAR at 11.6ms with SFP 3.1c, but now I seem to be able
to get it to 8.3ms - anything lower is instant dropout. This is still
very acceptable, and I'n now (finally) confident that the next
drivers will be even better.
since I'm only used to 4 dsps, I only use the STS5000 and a mixer. I
know I'm not stressing the PCI buss, so I can't tell if I've got the
problems Shayne is seeing. To be honest, I'll probably just stick to
directx plugs, and the occasional DXi xsynth, and leave the
Pulsar/Luna as it is.
I haven't tested it too thoroughly in SONAR, and I won't do much this
week as I have to study for a test (for work blah blah) - but I'll
let you know if I see any problems.
Oh yeah - I also put XP SP1 on. This has the USB2 drivers so you
don't have to fart around with the "fix" in the Asus addendum to the
manual (that tells you you'll screww up your XP installation if you
don't do these 3 things exactly right)
Initial results are very good though. It took a while to install the
mobo, and a new power suppply, re-install XP twice, install the
Pulsar/Luna and LAN card, set the BIOS, flash it, install SP1 twice,
play with SONAR etc etc. - but it all went pretty well.
Sorry bout the long post - but maybe someone can pick up a few tips
from this.
John Braner
John,
Thank you for the post... many things you talk about were more or less the same thing for me.
These Asus boards really are for Intel fans the best thing going, imho anyway.
If I *had* to do things again, I'd go with the P4B533-V as well. This board was on back order for about 3 weeks, I couldn't find it from a single vendor (that I trusted anyway), so I went with a straight P4B533. I did however get ddr333 ram, simply because of it's very low CAS 2 latency setting.
I'm pretty confident this box will last me a solid 3 and really more like 4 years of use. I tend to only build a new machine when I can triple the performance of my current rig.
An SRB to augment my Pulsar II and a UAD-1 card are a *must* though! These are the only things I'm really after at the moment.
Enjoy,
- sinix
Thank you for the post... many things you talk about were more or less the same thing for me.
These Asus boards really are for Intel fans the best thing going, imho anyway.
If I *had* to do things again, I'd go with the P4B533-V as well. This board was on back order for about 3 weeks, I couldn't find it from a single vendor (that I trusted anyway), so I went with a straight P4B533. I did however get ddr333 ram, simply because of it's very low CAS 2 latency setting.
I'm pretty confident this box will last me a solid 3 and really more like 4 years of use. I tend to only build a new machine when I can triple the performance of my current rig.
An SRB to augment my Pulsar II and a UAD-1 card are a *must* though! These are the only things I'm really after at the moment.
Enjoy,
- sinix
sinix,
I agree about the Asus boards. I'm gonna stick with this for a while too (until we get that mega softsynth that takes 60% CPU on a 2.4GHz PC )
My RAM set itself (using SBD settings in BIOS) as CAS 2 with the 1003 BIOS that came with the board - but when I upgraded to BIOS 1004, it reports itself as CAS 2.5!
I don't have time this week, but maybe I'll try to play with these settings next week.
I'll keep in touch if there's anything to report.
John Braner
I agree about the Asus boards. I'm gonna stick with this for a while too (until we get that mega softsynth that takes 60% CPU on a 2.4GHz PC
)My RAM set itself (using SBD settings in BIOS) as CAS 2 with the 1003 BIOS that came with the board - but when I upgraded to BIOS 1004, it reports itself as CAS 2.5!
I don't have time this week, but maybe I'll try to play with these settings next week.
I'll keep in touch if there's anything to report.
John Braner