Subject:Best Processor Chip

Posted by: shitcomputer

Date:6/4/2003 4:14:52 AM

Hey, just wondering what people are mostly using for sound editing out of the P4 and Athalon, and how these perform. Im building a new computer and not sure which to choose, any help is greatly appreciated, Matt.

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: shitcomputer

Date:6/4/2003 7:29:01 PM

Why havent i got an answer yet? i know im only new but cmon guys i kinda know what im doin, and i would like to hear froim sumone on teh processor chip thing. Thanks

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: MJhig

Date:6/4/2003 8:50:43 PM

The truth is it doesn't matter, SF is not processor intensive, it's only two tracks, even if there were much of a difference between the two processors.

Either one over 500 (Celeron, Pentium, Duron or Athlon) MHz and a reasonable amount of RAM on a reliable OS and a quality soundcard would be more than enough.

MJ

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: Sonic

Date:6/5/2003 9:05:53 AM

I should point out that Sound Forge 6 and later is multi-threaded, so if you want to take advantage of background processing/rendering to the fullest and are going with a single processor, a new hyper-threaded P4 may be a little better (and more expensive, I don't know whether they let you DIY with these since they require a specific mobo, chipset, and WinXP).

On the other hand, it may be just as reasonable to build multi-processor machine with Athalons or P4s (Win2k or XP required for that, btw).

Also, there are a handful of SSE2 optimizations in Sound Forge (SSE2 was introduced in the Pentium 4), and I don't know whether Athalons support those instructions yet. Worth checking.

But MJ is right. For most tasks, any modern processor is more than adequate for Sound Forge. I wouldn't factor performance differences too highly into your decision.

J.

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:6/5/2003 10:53:38 AM

Probably the main reason you never got an answer from this question, is that everyone is trying to avoid a flame war. There's ton's of Athlon vs. Pentium arguments throughout these SF forums........use the "search" function on the forums. Summary, is that most people have good and bad stories of each, so if I recommend one processor someone with criticize and tell all their horror stories. It's a LOSE/LOSE argument.

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:6/5/2003 12:30:39 PM

I've got SoundForge Studio 5 running on a 133MHz Celeron with no problems. Yeah, opening, editing, and saving may take a while, but playback is flawless. A stereo 44.1KHz 16 bit file even smooth scrolls during playback zoomed in to 32:1. At work i had SoundForge XP 4.5 running on a 486DX/66 with very few problems.

True, the interface has faster response on a 2GHz P4, but it does run on much slower processors.

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: keether

Date:6/5/2003 2:19:27 PM

Second that. For a couple of years I was running SF XP 5 on an AMD K-5 220 with 78MB RAM. Saving & editing took more time; but that's all. Nothing went wrong.

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: wedge13

Date:6/6/2003 12:44:53 AM

I've always had great success with AMD. I've also run SF 5 on a Pentium II 333MHz with 96MB RAM. Slower processing but still, no showstoppers.

My current DAW is an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU, Epox 8KHA+ MoBo, 512 MB PC2100 DDRAM, 80GB HD, and LynxONE PCI Sound card.

Definitely no problems with this setup. I'd recommend it to anyone who is a DIY'er. Disclaimer: You may have read (elsewhere in this forum) about a current problem I'm troubleshooting, that involves recording in 24-bit mode using SF 6. I suspect this is a non-hardware related issue, because SF 5 works great in 24-bit record mode.

Anyway... as others have said, most anything these days is more than powerful enough to be a no brainer. Just make sure you pay attention to the resources you feed your system (give it lots of RAM and storage space, a solid OS like Win2000, and don't load it up with a bunch of Gator & Kazaa marketing crap).

Good Luck!
Thom

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: captn_spalding

Date:6/6/2003 7:31:48 AM

We run SF 5 and CDA on an intel 450 p3 with 374 meg ram and a M-Audio 2496. The burner is a Plextor. The OS is Win2K and we keep the hard drives (scsi) defragged. This machine is used for very little else (occasional web surfing) We never had a moments problem with installation or use of SF and CDA. I've thought about upgrading to SF 6 to get the instant edits, but hesitate to change a system that works so flawlessly. With hardware getting so cheap it pays to treat computers as appliances - build a computer for a particluar use and invest in a good monitor and kvm switch. So, I guess i'm saying that the processor is less important than keeping the machine clean.

..spalding

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: kylen

Date:6/6/2003 3:05:52 PM

I chose a Pentium class (PIII) at the time over Celeron after sitting both of them side by side and doing a 3 minute wave file normalize. I intended to do that a lot at the time so I went to the computer store, put together a bare bones, tested the AMD, took the cpu/motherboard back to the store and swaped them for a PIII. The PIII performed what I needed 2x faster than the AMD.

When I outgrew the PIII I simply continued down the Intel road to the next model, the P4 without comparing latest models. I think P4 has some type of normalization issue in the floating point subsystem that you can research. There's a tool out on digitalfishphones that you can plugin to 'fix' symptoms, I haven't seen a problem myself and some plug vendors have added an algorithm to negate its effects. It's more of a performance issue I believe.

P4 is a stable platform for what I do, mastering 2 channel mixes with lots of 32 bit plugins, and a 64 bit Ozone.

I have since heard from sources I tend to listen to that the Athlon has a faster floating point. Till I set 2 of em side by side I won't know if it would make a difference for me.

Subject:RE: Best Processor Chip

Reply by: Remedy

Date:6/8/2003 11:51:42 AM

I'm not sure what exactly your after in performance comparisons, but these test here;

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1097141,00.asp

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1081665,00.asp

explains the reason why an AMD would be a preferred choice for SF6.