Thinking of making the leap to the wintel world.

[PTPerson]

I've been running PT since 3.0 on mac, and I'm now considering the move to PC, I notice on the digi site that only a handful of PCs are supported......are you guys using only these machines? or is PT running OK for you on other machines that are similarly specd. (I've sort of had enough of Apple)

I'm very new to the PC world, in fact I bought my first PC this weekend (an acer laptop) and I must say I'm liking it alot!......are any of you using multi processor machines? this is one of my main motivations for the move, I am simply not interesting in crossgrading my cards to PCIX just so I can upgrade my computer, also I hear that RTAS counts blitz the mac.

What are your guys feelings on this.....any feedback is incredibly appreciated.

Regards
Stefan Nowak

[donrey]

I have a dell Precision 670 and I love it. Never had any issues with it. I highly recommend it. I rent a room in a community studio (I'm one studio in a 6 studio room) and I am the only pc user. Let me tell you in the last 9 months I've seen all of the other studios experience issues whcih range from corrupt data on a glyph harddrive to simply crashes. I have not. Not to mention my set up is more complex, since I have a procontrol, HD Accell, 2 192's, a focusrite liquid channel hooked up USB, 3 keyboards via USB and a ton of raid and external hardrives..... and should be more prone to glitches, but no. My machine is a dual core machine, Xeon, 3.0 with 1gb of Ram. As a matter of fact there are times when I create sessions in my machine and take them to a G5 and notice the speed difference with RTAS plug ins, particularly Waves. One session last week read 25% cpu usage on my system, I took the same session to a New G5 similarly equiped system and it read almost 45%. Granted I have tweaked my cpu so that almost nothing is running in the background but...

After buying my system I noticed a lot of information on the DUC regarding systems which work well without being digi approve so look around but I can personally tell you that it may be better to just pick one of the approved systems. The last thing you want is to deal with glitches while you are trying to work.

A few things you should be aware of though (if you are not already):

1) DO NOT KEEP YOUR PC ON LINE like most mac users do. There are a lot of worms and viruses out there)
2) Make sure you get a good Virus Scan program so that you can scan files when bringing sessions to your new pc (viruses again).
3) With a pc you will most likely want to tweak it so that it is lightning fast.... DO NOT EXPERIMENT TOO MUCH. Once you have that perfect optimization leave it. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to make a new tweak or install a new driver which messes my configuration up. BRINGS TO MIND THE OLD SAYING, DON'T FIX IT IF IT IS NOT BROKEN.

Other than that PC/MAC... I see no difference. I use both and well I prefer PC but because I'm comfortible with it but while running protools it's all the same. You should check out ebay, they have great deals on refurbished Dell Precision 670's.

[MDog]

The good:
1. rock solid stable once you set it up
2. more configurable such as rack mount cases & silent cooling fans etc
3. usually more PCI slots (I have 5 on my Asus P4C800-E)
4. more efficient native processing
5. cheaper and easier hardware repairs/upgrades if needed
6. doesn't feature many of the OSX/Unix "voodoo" issues such as repairing permissions etc

The bad:
1. don't use it for surfing the internet - dedicate a machine to PT
2. some people have a bias towards the Mac and you may be met with skeptics
3. LOTs of virus and malware floating around
4. initial learning curve if switching from the Mac
5. possibly more routine maintenance (not difficult but something to remember)
6. the initial system decision, Macs are easier since there aren't as many models
7. some TDM plugs available only for Mac

I've probably left some things out, but I hope it helps. I switched from OS9 when I upgraded to
HD and have been very happy.

[EGS]

I've been using Macs for years, and have recently switched to Win XP. I think MDog is right on. I had a Windows expert get me set-up, and I encountered some user growing pains. Now I love it and it is a very stable PT rig. Follow ALL the Digi-suggested setup steps. Do a clean install. Keep your Mac and use it to go online. It's good to know both platforms, too. Good luck!

[PTPerson]

Great guys, thanks for the responses, I'm currently running the PT rig on a G4/800 which never gets connected to the net anyway, I have a strict policy never to connect any of my studio computers to the the internet. Out of interest I priced the Dell 670 and it's actually almost twice the price of a base G5!, howabout the Asus? is that working out?....PCI slots....how many do PCs come stocked with? and how many are free (ie) are any taken up with "stock" type devices - ie graphics, networking etc as that is another motivation for me as I'm running HD3 and wouldn't mind putting another process card in there (have u seen the used price for process cards?!?!?! the best value DSP on the planet imo)

Regards
Stefan Nowak

PS I'm loving XP and this laptop........would ACER be an option as a desktop PC for PT?

[jeff markham]

which ACER? .. the motherboard chipset, CPU, ram configuration are
important to make the determination. would this be for HD or M or LE?
jeff

[PTPerson]

Ah ok, looks like I have to do a bit more research, I will be using it for an HD system with ProControl......what I guess I'm really asking is, is it absolutley compulsory to go with one of digis approved PC's?

Stefan Nowak

[jeff markham]

no, it's not compulsory .. but there are a few chipsets and
configurations which are more problematic than others. and, as
noted, configuring the OS nearly exactly as digi recommends
is very important or the system will misbehave.
jeff

[PTPerson]

Ok cool, and am I correct in thinking that my current HD cards will work in PC's, that is they aren't the new PCI spec.......how many slots do PC's generally have free?

Thanks
Stefan

[Rail Jon Rogut]

The stock stable and mature system is the Asus P4C800 Deluxe-E motherboardbased system. It's rock solid for me. You'll also want to use Zalman fans (or equivalent) to reduce fan noise. You'll have 5 PCI slots with the graphics card in the AGP slot. You should add a Digi qualified FireWire card.

A stock system will not usually be quiet.

Rail