Ableton Forum

Building a new PC to run live 8 and reason 4 along with a couple vsts. I am not an apple fan. I need some help deciding between

1) amd vs intel

is the core i7 really worth the price or should i save some cash and get the amd phenom

2) ddr2 vs ddr3
is ddr3 really that much better

thank you in advance for your advice

I think the fact that you can build your own PC instead of having to choose from some expensive pre-built models speaks to one the big advantage of PCs over Macs, and this coming from a former Mac user. Too bad because Apple seems cooler and more innovative in some respects.

Sounds like DDR3 is better in some respects than DDR2 but not really enough to justify the much higher price. If you've got money to burn you might want to go with DDR3 though since it sounds like it's the new standard that will eventually replace DDR2 and apparently DDR3 RAM is not backwards compatible with DDR2 so you won't be able to switch in the future without getting a whole new motherboard.

Not sure about Intel vs. AMD. I read somewhere that there are more choices for Intel chipsets that support DDR3 memory so I guess if you decide to go with DDR3 that may influence your decision somewhat.

I like the i7's but if you don't want to pay the price for one of those, try a Core 2 Quad. I'm loving my q6600. I have it overclocked to 3ghz's and it handles everything that I throw at it.

The i7's are fantastic. I have a 920 (cheapest in the range at £211) and it's overclocked to 3.8GHz which is the most you can overclock the most expensive (975 at £753 (!)) in the range to.
Even if you don't overclock, they are great cpu's.
If you choose to overclock an i7 make sure you get a decent cooler, like the Noctua NH-U12P-E for £54.
I don't know where in the world you are, but if you're in the uk try http://www.scan.co.uk/Index.aspx?NT=1-0-0-0-0. I always shop with them due to their great customer service.
In fact, I had my current pc built to order by them. If you do this they do the overclocking and guarantee it for the length of your warranty.

Neil.

the i7 are great for ableton live, as it's an app that sometimes parallelizes and uses all 4 cores (+ the 4 extrahyperthreads), and sometimes just uses one, or two cores, depending on how the music is set up.

the i7 is awesome for clocking the used cores higher if some other cores are unused, giving you best performance in all cases, from single cored situations (like exporting a track) to fully parallelized multicore moments.

if you have money to spend, it's a great beast.

oh, and, please do plan in to get a nice ssd. personally, i can only suggest you to get the intel 160gb ssd, the silver one (that's gen2). using a pc with an ssd fixes just the thing that made you buy new pc's for years: the pc, finallly, won't ever be slow again.. (because most of the time the slow hdd is the reason we think the pc is slow)

and if you're really crazy, get the i7 and 5 intel ssds, raid them up for fun (seen deadmau5 having done that lately.. don't have the money for it myself ).

oh, and if you don't have yet, plan some money for backup (i suggest winhomeserver from self-experience).

but it all depends on the budget

Definitely Intel, I like supporting the underdog so I went AMD with my last system, big mistake, though the motherboard probably played a part in that too.
Intel is really where it's at. Unfortunate because like Microsoft it's another nasty capitalist company that plays dirty to eliminate the competition.
Unlike Microsoft their technology is very good though.

so is microsofts software.. which is why i have no need to switch to mac or linux.. fast, stable, reliable, simple, and cheap.

but i know everyone laughs at me because of that

it's about investing in the right things to get the most benefit. and gigging now for years with a vista based laptop with no problem ever in all those years at least shows i can not be that wrong

I never have a problem with Windows. It's the internet that always kills my pc. That's why I never go online with my laptop or my desktop music pc.

The computer that I am using to post in this thread with has been killed on several occasions because I only use it for the internet. As a matter of fact, a virus just killed it 3 weeks ago.

I used to be a die-hard AMD fan, but as of the Core2Duo days, AMD has lost it's edge. Bottom line is that Intel is worth the price. Their chips run way faster, taking less power and running cooler. You simply can't go wrong.

I've had my Q6600 for a year, and I have no desire to upgrade any time soon. The I7 chips are even faster, but you need a new board, and DDR3.

If you want to save money, get a Quad core, like Q9400 or something like that - and get a chip that has the most L2 cache as possible. Then get 8gb of DDR2 ram, and run Windows7 x64, and you'll be all set for 2 years, minimum.

If you want to go balls out, get the i7 quad, with 6-8gb of DDR3 with an ASUS board, and you should be set for 3-5 years. Note, this path will lead to better upgradeability as you'll have a newer mother board, so the new chip architecture will keep you afloat longer without having to replace all your computer guts.

As for getting a Mac, short of the hard drives, you can't swap shit. That and the price of entry keep me from getting one, even though I'll be the first to admit that OSX is cooler, and that Win7, even after 8 years of development is still a ghetto version of OSX. But the ghetto is getting gentrified pretty fast

BTW, I never EVER have issues with viruses. I dunno why people bitch about getting viruses on PCs. I don't even use a firewall. All I have is Firefox (religiously used, never EVER use IE) and Avast Home Free Edition. That's it. I don't have UAC on, or any other form of "protection" - and I never get anything. EVER.

I seriously don't get it. And when Macfags go "oooh you'll get a virus, you're gonna get screwed" I just want to slap them like the little bitches they are.

1) Get the latest lynnfield processor from intel. it has hyper-threading with incredible performance gains. The old hyperthreading only had a small performance boost. In many applications, the version of hyperthreading on this chip can nearly double the performance. Its almost like an 8 core processor at times. So given this performance at this price point its unbeatable.

If you don't fear technical details check this out : http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... spx?i=3634


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115215

2)

The socket this puppy users only supports ddr3 as far as i can tell.

davepermen wrote: oh, and, please do plan in to get a nice ssd. personally, i can only suggest you to get the intel 160gb ssd, the silver one (that's gen2). using a pc with an ssd fixes just the thing that made you buy new pc's for years: the pc, finallly, won't ever be slow again.. (because most of the time the slow hdd is the reason we think the pc is slow)

this is absolutely true, i just bought 2 128gig crucial ssds for the office.

I follow ExtremeTech's RSS feeds and they regularly have recommended builds at various price points.

You can follow their extreme gaming PC build plans, but you can cut back on the video parameters. Game machines are usually the fastest designs.

Here's Extreme Tech's HowTo page:
http://www.extremetech.com/category2/0, ... 478,00.asp

Tom's Hardware is another good source for building advice:
http://www.tomshardware.com/theme-build ... n,156.html

At Tom's there is an AMD review from Sept 2009 that might help you decide.

arachnaut wrote:I follow ExtremeTech's RSS feeds and they regularly have recommended builds at various price points.

You can follow their extreme gaming PC build plans, but you can cut back on the video parameters. Game machines are usually the fastest designs.

Here's Extreme Tech's HowTo page:
http://www.extremetech.com/category2/0, ... 478,00.asp

Tom's Hardware is another good source for building advice:
http://www.tomshardware.com/theme-build ... n,156.html

At Tom's there is an AMD review from Sept 2009 that might help you decide.

I <3 toms hardware, I've been reading them since 2001.

agreed on Tom's

I just built this box for my office / new job, I'm getting 4 19" samsung lcd's to go with it =)