AMD or Intel

[Scotty-D]

I am currently building a new system from the ground up but I am unsure of what CPU is best. Can anyone advise me of the difference between AMD and Intel based systems?

 

[Scotty-D]

I have around £2000 for the full setup. You guys have some very helpful advice on here thanks.

 

[Scotty-D]

I forgot to mention that i will be using the system for sound editing with Cubase.

 

[Scotty-D]

What version of cubase? and would you consider the machine a music production machine first and foremost? Any gaming?

Cubase 5.5 and i will not be gaming on the machine at all i have a Playstation 3 for that.

 

[Scotty-D]

Good stuff, You wont need to spend anywhere near £2000.

Cubase 5.5 support above 4 cores, So a hex core would show benefits for you.

So a nice AMD 1050t or 1090t setup, Plenty of Ram and storage space, SSD OS drive, Good motherboard and sound card and you my friend will be laughing!

Unfortunately I havent the time to look up hardware for a proper spec and cost. But atleast 6gb Ram! the more the better though. I have to sleep now, early morning =)

Thanks for the advice. I was looking at the AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) and thought the price was pretty good.

 

[Scotty-D]

Seems like Cubase 5.5 can use more than 4 cores so either an i7 930 or phenomII X6 1055T or 1090T.

No need for an expensive motherboard, something cheap will be fine, I'd grab a large SSD (or even a few for working on the files ), then a separate 1-2TB drive or few depending on the need for storage.

Grab a nice quiet full tower case if you got room for it, good proper sound card too.

Graphic card is irrelevant as you're not going to be gaming, I'd say something like the passive 5550 will be perfect and you can run up to 3monitors from it as well.

Definitely grab at least 2 large 24"-26" monitors as you want a lot of work space when working with music.

I don't think you can spend 2000 on it, well, you can grab 980X or some 300GB SSD but it will be stupid to do as there are new CPUs coming next year and pretty much anything above i7 930 or 1055/1090T will be silly expensive and pointless to buy ( Unless you really need all that extra power right now ).

So to sum up:

i7 930 + mobo + mem = ¬430 / 1055T + mobo + mem = ¬280
SSD = 150 for 90gb
HDD = ¬45 per 1TB
Sound card = 60 to 180 ( for professional music might want the 100+ ones )
GPU = 50
Monitors = around 120 for 22", ¬160 for 24", 240-250 for 27", preferably 2 at least.

Good case = ¬70-80 - 200
Cooling = 40+
PSU = ¬60-70
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Total = Starts from about 950-1000 for dual monitors setup with nice case, good cooling and fast large SSD and x6 1055T, up to whatever depending on your needs but I'd say this is already a beast setup and you probably won't need anything more ( apart from stuff like larger monitor or more storage or better sound card - CPU wise it has plenty of power ).

There is so much to choose from out there I'm getting myself messed up. I will be needing a top end sound card and muti monitor.

Is there a big margin between the i7930 and 1090T?

 

[Scotty-D]

Would these parts all fit and work together?

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Asus Crosshair IV Extreme AMD 890FX (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard

AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3)

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD Sound Card (70SB127000001)

LG E2250V 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black - X2

Corsair Dominator GT 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMG4GX3M2A1600C7) - X2

Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 600W Power Supply

Corsair Hydro H70 High-Performance CPU WaterCooler

 

[Scotty-D]

They are being fully utilized though. Even I7 wont keep up in cubase 5.5 when 6 cores are in use. HT or not. Not much difference! But cost wise it makes I7 a silly choice. This is a thread asking specific questions, for a program with hex optimization.

With regards to your choice OP. Its a wet dream.

2 screens though with 8gb. Nice! Do you record you own stuff? 2 screens is going to be fantastic, I do guitar, vocals and syth drums, 2 screens is just so damn good, after a week of using them, you'll wonder how you got by without.

Just thought i better mention there are better sound cards than the Xifi Titanium. M-audio for instance do some, But there is by no means anything wrong with the card you've chosen.

It's a bit similar to when you get graphics cards. Quattro and Matrox make the best graphics cards for editing graphics, But AMD and Nvidia make the best for most stuff and they're pretty damn good when it comes to graphics too. (I am slightly drunk so I may be rambling But I think you get what Im saying)

I'm just about to grab some beer now mate. Maybe you can give me some lessons on how to put all this stuff together lol. I do create my own music yes Cubase is a dream.

 

[Scotty-D]

dont buy extreme buy formula its the same thing only extreme has hydra chip that is not particularly useful

Thanks for the advice and will do. In currently stuck on choosing a PSU at the moment. I may end up putting a half decent GPU in the setup as i may want to play Blu-Ray movies now and again.

Any advice on a PSU? I would like the best one as I want this computer to last for some time.

 

[Scotty-D]

dont buy extreme buy formula its the same thing only extreme has hydra chip that is not particularly useful

I just looked at the spec of both but the new extreme allows for 1600Mhz memory the Formula does not.

 

[Scotty-D]

the ocz modxstream 500w i listed in my spec is a very solid psu.

What exactly would 500W support this is the problem I'm having. What wattage to buy?

 

[Scotty-D]

yes it does u can go up 2000mhz on formula if not higher. is the same board just hydra chip. im runing 1600mhz on formula.

about the psu if you going to use single card i go for corsair 650w , i wouldn't go 500w with spec you have.

edit: http://uk.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=kPGmtxee5RsQVsXG&templete=2

look ur self it supports 2000mhz

On the Mobo description it states 2000Mhz(OC) what exactly does that mean? Does OC stand for you have to have standard 1600Mhz and overclock it to 2000Mhz?

 

[Scotty-D]

It just means that you can oc ur mem up too 2000mhz. Nothing for you to worry about, even mobos that just say 1600 will do more if needed.

So if I was to buy 2000Mhz dual channel memory and put it in a Asus Formula it would work without messing around with the voltages and so on?

 

[Scotty-D]

A few words of advice from a fellow music producer:

1. Forget AMD CPUs In music production Intel CPUs are much more efficient at low latencies (with ASIO buffers @ 128 samples and below). A quad-core i5 760 should give you a better performance than a six core Phenom. (In the realms of DAWs 'performance' actually means how many VST/VSTi plugins you can use at once without freezing tracks and keeping the latency as low as possible). It seems the the sweet spot for price/performance is Core i7 860.

2. Have a look/join the forums @ www.dawbench.com This is the only website that I know of that tests various CPU/OS configurations for music production. You can download the test suite(s) and try it yourself

3. Leave some room in your budget for a good audio interface - think about stable drivers and low latency operation. Unless you need portability, don't bother with external audio interfaces (Firewire or USB) and get yourself a decent PCI/PCIe one. One of the best (but expensive )choices would be RME (either HDSP 9632 for PCI or AIO for PCIe) but something like M-Audio Delta or Echo Audio should be fine.

4. If you want to use Win7 64bit make sure that there are stable and mature drivers otherwise you might get issues with Cubase (or any other DAW).

5. Leave even more money to cure your addiction when you start buying more gear/plugins to make music

Fantastic information. I was wondering how long it would be until a producer was to look at this thread.

 

[Scotty-D]

Looks from those benchs that HT works fine with it, that would make i5 a really bad choice in here, maybe ur friend doesn't know as much as he thinks : ).

If you can point me out to benchmark that works under win7 i'll be more than happy to provide some results. I couldn't seem to start any of those on that website.

I do intend to overclock the i5 760 to 4Ghz would this still no be adequate for the job?