Questions I'm Losing Sleep Over

[DJ FADE]

im about the build a new computer and am trying to learn as much as possible and get lots of opinions and feedback from people owning the same hardware before going out and doing it.

my first concern is this: for the past couple years, i have been running a custom built computer, consisting of an AMD Athlon processor, running at 1.2 ghz with a 100mhz fsb. it runs with a VIA KT133A chipset (as shown by PC Wizard), and it runs with 512 megs of ram. simply put, this machine sucks. it is not completely configured as an audio production only pc, but i shoudl be getting better performance than i do. right now, i can hardly even TRACK in pro tools without getting lots of "hardware buffer" errors. its VERY annoying. so i guess the first question is: is this normal..? it seems that the AMD processors are favored, but something is seriously wrong with my machine. haha.

next question: how many of you keep your pc's as strictly audio production only machines? id like to be able to use my new machine for a variety of tasks, is this possible? and how much will this decrease performace when it comes to audio processing? also, is it possible to be running pro tools with other programs running in the background? i know the advancements in pc performance are very drastic, but how much is REALLY possible?

next: im looking at building the allenstein machine, possibly with a few modifications. ive heard that dual channel ddr-ram is much better, but this motherboard doesnt seem to accept that.. is that a problem? would something with dual channel be better? also, how important is the video card? would one be fine with a lower grade one, or is it better to just be safe with a higher end card. and how about some opinions on dual monitors..?

these are all questions that have been weighing on my mind lately. any help is really really appreciated. i know the post is kind of long, but thank you for bearing with me.

[n3xus]

First, you should make sure you are running as few programs as possible while running Pro Tools and turn off every service you don't need. Second, I highly recommend using 2 hard drives if your not already doing this. If you only have one, at least create 2 seperate partitions, 1 for the operating system and 1 for audio. There are several guides on how to tweak Windows XP,a few of these can be found at http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php and http://www.tweaktown.com I also use a tool called Tune XP which can be found at http://www.driverheaven.net/dforce/s...c=txp_download That should get you started, and if your having a lot of problems with your computer and Pro Tools, maybe start off with a fresh install of Windows XP after backing up your files. I hope that helped.

[DJ FADE]

that did help, thank you for the reply. yeah, when im running pro tools on this machine im always sure to open it up after a fresh restart and do not run anything else, or have anything else in the system tray either. i recently reformatted. i used to run two separate hard drives, but the deskstar crashed, so now im just using a 160gb drive partitioned into 4 drives, including one for audio. even when i had the other hard drive and right after a fresh reformat, performance wasnt a whole lot better. so ive pretty much given up on this machine. which is fine, because ive had this one for a good 2-3 years and its about time for an upgrade. the links are great, and i'll definitely keep them bookmarked and ready to go for the new machine. thanks again for the reply.

[albee1952]

You really do want another hard drive for audio. Partitions do not yield the same performance advantage of a seperate drive. Just because you reboot, does not mean you don't have a ton of stuff running in the background that you are not aware of. If it were me, I would delegate the old computer to do all my non-audio functions. For ProTools, go to the "Best PC" thread and buy exactly what is listed. Do the recommended tweaks and be prepared to have a solid and fast protools machine. Deviate from the recommendations and you're on your own. Its way too easy to buy the right stuff the first time instead of complaining about "why can't I buy this or why can't I use that". Protools is finicky so be safe and stay sane. I have a Deskstar that I am expecting to crash soon. That is the reason IBM quit selling hard drives. Those were all made by Hitachi, so I would steer clear of them as well. I use the Deskstar as a system drive and always have a spare system drive that is a clone of the main system drive. WD, Maxtor and Seagate are all good bets as long as you go 7200rpm and 8mb cache. The new motherboards with SATA are cool because you can install more drives easily as you have the SATA connections as well as the IDE connections. And get a DVD-RW and keep all your sessions backed up.