Athlon

[aristontyler]

I've read the other extremely long list of comments on the athlon systems, and most seem to agree that it's a great system. I am buying from a budget place online, they include a generic motherboard that supposedly supports 266 mhz FSB for the Athlons. I plan to upgrade to the Asus A7M266 first chance, but do you think I will have any trouble meantime. What actually determines the performance of the motherboard, other than the throughput??

I am very new at digital recording and would appreciate any help. My computer and digi 001 should arrive at about the same time and I want to have my "ducks in a row" (to be cliche).

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[vlastyn]

Hi,
See what chipset the motherboard you're getting has. I think the reason that people (including myself) have success with the A7M266 board is because it has the Athlon 760 chipset.

[JPS]

"I am buying from a budget place online, they include a generic motherboard that supposedly supports 266 mhz FSB for the Athlons. I plan to upgrade to the Asus A7M266 first chance, but do you think I will have any trouble meantime."

You could certainly improve your chances of this system working if you knew which motherboard is coming with the system. When you know the manufacturer and model#, you learn a lot of info about your system, including memory, PCI slots, chipset, CPU upgradeability, tweakability, controller chip for HD, DDR support, video support, bus speed, and other information important to digital recording. It may be good news when you get your system, but "generic" often indicates the cheapest solution where quality componets are not important. This may not be the best way to put together a DAW.

It appears that certain chipsets with certain motherboards will work best with the Digi 001. These combinations are usually chipset dependant. For example, your board could include the more economical ALi Magik chipset, which will not work. There has been several unsuccessful atempts. That means you automatically incur the cost and time of installing a new motherboard, drivers, ect...

On the otherhand,apparently the AMD761/Via686B chipset does fine, as does the VIA KT133A and KT133. These chipsets are in motherboards that work. Much of that info is available to you here on the DUC for free. Using this information will reduce your risk and the followinf problems of your system not being compatible when you instal the Digi card. I can only hope when you get your system you are pleasantly surprized... but, I wouldn't count on it.

[Increddibelly]

Sorry to shake your hopes, but Pro Tools doesn't really like non-Intel CPU's. You might save yourself a headache if you get a PIII straight away...

http://www.digidesign.com/support/compat/index.html

hope it helps, cheers

[da BaSsTaRd!]

if you stick with digi-approved specs, you'll end up with a wimpy, expensive, but usable machine. go with a AMD/DDR setup and you'll get a machine that eats streaming audio for its mid morning snack. i read one post on the davec torture test where a guy with a 1.33 athlon had over 200 plugins running at once. you're lucky to get 1/4 that performance with the digi-approved stuff.

that performance can come at a price - but certainly not a high dollar price! some people have had problems, but i'm sure that if one man can, any man can make these AMD setups work. by the way, even the digi-approved setups come with their fair share of headaches.

reach for the stars, brother........

[znelson]

Very true.. if you have lots of patience or you're a lucky person, go athlon! When my system was up, I had 40 tracks recording with 200 effect plugins at one time. It was a smokin machine. Just gotta do your research here on the forums and you should be able to find workarounds for every problem. I wouldn't recommend a GA7DX MB or a A7A266.. I personally had problems with both although some people have had success with the GA7DX. Careful with the heat on that one. The A7M266 seems to work the best from what I've read, we'll see this weekend.

[da BaSsTaRd!]

200 baby!!!! go athlon.........

[aristontyler]

I'm glad I decided on the Athlon, then. I'll probably need to upgrade my motherboard to the A7M266, but for the price I paid for this system, you'll not hear a complaint out of me.

Also, has anyone seen the external CD writers that use firewire?? They're new and a little pricey right now, but once they come down, I'm sure they'll be a smokin' way to bounce your tunes to a CD.

[aristontyler]

I wouldn't recommend a GA7DX MB or a A7A266.. I personally had problems with both although some people have had success with the GA7DX. Careful with the heat on that one. [/B]

GA7DX?? That's a new one for me. Who makes that?

[Mark_Knecht]

I bought Giga-Byte boards for my lab and 4 out of 7 were bad!

On the other hand, I'm running 4 A7V133's in my lab, and 1 at home with the Digi in it and they've been perfect. I can run 24 tracks + 6 aux tracks, all with 5 plug-ins with a 1.2GHz Athlon and 256MB DRAM. All for about $700. Very cost effective.

If you really want to go faster tha 1.2GHz I understand AMD is recommending maybe the 266 MOBO's from Asus.

So, buy from the cheapest place you can find the right products. I would recommend staying away from Giga-byte.

Take care,
Mark