Is this a good dedicated config?

[Cool7s_Dad]

Hi all and thanks for reading this. I\'m on the verge of purchasing an entirely new system dedicated to GS (thanks for the excellent config tips killerbobjr) within the next few days. I\'m going to build it myself. If any of you good, knowledgable people would look it over and tell me if you think it\'s a good config for a dedicated GS setup, point out any weaknesses, or let me know if I can do better, I would *greatly* appreciate it. Here it is:

1) Medium tower case, 300W power supply
2) Intel CC820 main board, 133Mhz front side bus, Intel 820 jumperless chipset w/no audio
3) Intel Pentium III 600EB, 600Mhz processor capable of utilizing 133Mhz bus
4) 256MB 100Mhz ram (there\'s just not any 133Mhz ram available yet... and the CC820 doesn\'t support it anyway)
5) Adaptec AHA-19160 Ultra160 SCSI controller
6) Plextor 32x SCSI CD-ROM drive (with caddyless loading)
7) Floppy drive
8) Quantum Atlas 10K, Ultra160, 18.2GB, 10000RPM hard drive with 4.7ms avg. access time and 160MB/s sustained transfer rate
9) Echo Gina card using 5.02 drivers (already have this... got a floor model for $50 that seems to work fine)

One question I have already: Would it be stupid to get an EIDE ATA/66 drive for the boot drive? Would that negate performance? It would allow me to get a non-SCSI CD drive and isolate the SCSI bus to the GS sample drive... but it could negate performance... I just don\'t know how EIDE and SCSI interact. Or would it be better to just go with the one SCSI drive... I know people recommend 2 drives, but that really runs up the cost.

Thanks,
Tim

[LifeForceExplorer]

Hey Tim - I\'m working my way through the same issues these days. The MOST helpful website by far that I know is at www.audiocomputing.com (\"http://www.audiocomputing.com\") . Go to Boris\' Corner and read the extensive, helpful articles - about seven of them. This guy really knows the details and will chat with you on the phone, regardless of how likely a customer you are. End result: I\'m gonna buy a machine from Boris - when I can afford it, that is.

[Sam]

Tim, mostly well spec\'d. Don\'t shortchange yourself in the disk department, that will be your perfomance limiting factor with GS. I wouldn\'t worry about the speed of RAM, the normal stuff is plenty fast and you\'ll do better to remove other bottlenecks (mostly that disk). Personally, I wouldn\'t spend much of a premium for 133Mhz, or 600Mhz over 500, or plextor scsi. The plextor is way nice, but I\'ve got a toshiba scsi cd that was cheap and fast, and I don\'t give it a second thought. I don\'t know your adaptec card, if it\'s just one bus you don\'t want to mix fast wide protocol stuff with slow/narrow, I have a 2940u2w with 2 busses, so the fast disks can be run wide, and the narrow scsi cd\'s are separate. If that plextor is wide you\'ll pay a huge premium for it (probably not worth it) and if it\'s narrow I wouldn\'t put in on the same scsi chain as a premium drive.

SCSI and ide get along fine, I do that. Also I suspect the performance difference is not huge, I stream audio in and out to/from both simultaneously and it works fine in any combo. Good to separate the GS streaming disk from the windows/ audio writing disk, GS will hit its disk pretty hard when you\'re streaming in say 40 sustaining notes.

The other thing I\'d check on is that the Echo card runs on a system with such a fast bus. Not trying to spread FUD, since I have no idea, but in the past some Echo cards were sensitive in their system requirements.

I put together a system sorta like yours 6 months ago so most of it is lower speced than what you have (same memory, 500Mhz, 7200 rpm drives (20G ide & 9G scsi, I haven\'t nearly filled them, and when they\'re full big disks will be much less). I want for nothing in GS (it kicks *ss actually), you\'d do fine with \'older\' technology if $ is an issue. I do recommend getting quality stuff and you\'ve chosen well there.

-s

[Cool7s_Dad]

Thanks for everything you guys. You prove that the best thing about GigaSampler is the people who use it :)

Peace,
Tim

[Cool7s_Dad]

BTW, I spoke to the tech support department at Echo by phone, and they say that the Gina card (and all their cards) work fine on the CC820 motherboard. Their main concern is that you have an Intel chipset and an Intel processor. They don\'t recommend Athlon processors or VIA chipsets, FWIW.

Thanks again,
Tim

[killerbobjr]

>>>>
Hi all and thanks for reading this. I\'m on the verge of purchasing an entirely new system dedicated to GS
<<<<

Egads! You\'ve got enough of a system there to run Gigasampler and a sequencer at the same time plus sequence the entire human genome! ;-)

>>>>
One question I have already: Would it be stupid to get an EIDE ATA/66 drive for the boot drive?
<<<<

As long as you keep just the OS and GS on the IDE drive and turn off the swap file, you should be okay. The main thing is to not access the boot drive once everything is running. Theoretically, you should only need one drive on a dedicated GS machine, but I haven\'t been able to prove to my satisfaction that Windows doesn\'t load and unload DLL\'s from the system directory or read and write to the registry while GS is running. Eventually I\'ll have to go in there with the debugger and find out for sure, but for now I recommend a seperate boot drive just to be safe.

[midiboy]

ahm ... sorry, to jump in here guys but there are two things I am not happy about in

Cool7s-Dad´s planned configuration. First of all, the Intel 820 chipset used on this board

is really a waste of money. For two reasons:

1. It has been struck by bugs, many of which Intel has already acknowledged.
2. It is designed for use with RAMBUS memory, which unfortunately is extremely expensive and

yet performs worse than the old BX chipset with 100Mhz SDRAM. Therefore they ( intel )

designed the MTH ( Memory translator hub ) which translates the parallel SDRAM protocol to

serial RAMBUS protocol. This of course degrades performance even more so in the end you get

less performance for more money *gg* If you don´t believe me, read some professional

computer magazines or better yet, visit Tom´s hardware Guide. This is a great guide for

anything PC related and he has issued two very good articles on Rambus and the 820 chipset.
http://www.tomshardware.com/ (\"http://www.tomshardware.com/\")

There are better solutions which will even cost less money. You could either buy a good and

proven BX motherboard like an ASUS P3BF which will let you use Coppermine Pentium 3´s with

100Mhz bus up to 800 Mhz I believe. This solution performs equal and in many cases BETTER

than the boards with 820 chipset even though this technology is a few years old already. You

can checkout benchmarks on Tom´s site which prove this ! Just be sure to get an BX board

that will let you use the Coppermines ( they have to support 1.65V processors ) ... not all

of them do !

Then, of course you could get a board with the Via Apollo Pro 133 chipset. I know VIA hasn´t

had a great reputation but they are getting better and better and this chipset has shown in

many tests that it is equal and better than the 820 chipset. It also provides the 133 bus

and 133 SDRAM compatability and will soon be available for dual processor configurations.

BTW: If I were you, I would be getting myself a board with two processor slots like the Tyan

Tiger 100 for instance. It is a BX board and in the newest revision has support for dual

Pentum 3´s up to 800 Mhz. You do not need a second processor right away, but you will thank

yourself if you one day will be able to run Gigastudio in Windows 2000. Then you will be

able to run it along with a sequencer without any sacrifices because each app will use its

own processor.

The second thing which caught my eye is the harddisk. You were right in choosing Ultra 160

SCSI and the Quantum 10k U160 harddisk, but why do you want to add a IDE harddisk if you

have spent so much money on a 160 MB SCSI data bus? You see, one Quantum 10k harddisk will

never use more than 40 MB of your 160 MB limit because its transfer rate won´t get any

higher. So the only reason for getting a U160 card would be to have more than one U160

harddisk. The great thing about SCSI after all is the fact that it can read/write

concurrently and that this won´t stress the processor load so much as with IDE. A recent

benchmark I have seen somewhere on the net shows that IDE disks use as much as 30% of

processor time when reading/writing even with busmastering activated. It does that because

the bus waits for acknowledgment after each read/write operation and blocks the bus during

that time. This does not happen with SCSI where command queing permits the bus to just work

along during those times. This limits processor usage to 5% maximum.

So I would get two of those Quantum disks, one for GS and one for sequencer and OS. This

will work great in a dual processor configuration.

BTW: Every Ultra 160 card I know of ( at least the adaptec cards ) come with an U-SCSI

bridge that seperates the slower USCSI devices from the U160 devices. So you do not need a

seperate controller for the CDRW or DVD/CDROM. They will be on the same bus but won´t cause

any problems with speed degradation.

Ah yeah ... and get 512 MB RAM !!! :-))))) You can load more samples in GS ! :-)

Good luck !
Alex

[killerbobjr]

>>>>
ahm ... sorry, to jump in here guys but there are two things I am not happy about in Cool7s-Dad´s planned configuration.
<<<<

Well, he didn\'t say he wanted the cheapest system possible. For a dedicated Gigasampler system that WON\'T be upgraded to Gigastudio, I\'d recommend as the cheapest configuration:

AMD K6-2 500MHz processor
FIC VA-503+ motherboard + AT style case
128MB PC100 ram
IBM Deskstar or Seagate Barracuda IDE drive (both sub-9ms)
Matrox G200 video card
Any cheap, fast CD-ROM drive
MIDIMan Delta44 audio card

This is way more than adequate for GS running by itself on a dedicated machine.

For a more flexible system that can do all 160 voices in Gigastudio when it is released:

Intel Coppermine 600E processor
Asus P3B-F motherboard
256MB PC100 ram
IBM Ultrastar or Quantum Atlas SCSI U2W drive (not Seagate though -- their SCSI drives are too noisy and run too hot)
Adaptec 2940U2W LVD SCSI controller
Matrox G400 video card
Pioneer 303S or 404S SCSI DVD drive
Aardvark Aark 24/24 audio card

This is priced low enough that it won\'t break the bank but gives pretty high performance. In fact, my two DAW systems are pretty similiar to these configurations, the main exceptions being that I run two SCSI drives on the K6 based system (where GS is) and the Coppermine system is overclocked (running Cakewalk PA9). (My former Pentium 233 that I describe in my tips article is now my network server).

[Cool7s_Dad]

Thanks you guys for all your great input and advice. The deed is done, and here\'s what I wound up with:

Asus P3B-F main board (6 PCI, 1 ISA)
Pentium III CuMine 700Mhz processor
512MB Micron PC-100 8ns SDRAM
Quantum Atlas 10K 9.1GB, 10000RPM, 4.7ms, Ultra160 A/V rated hard drive (boot drive)
Quantum Atlas 10K 18.2GB, 10000RPM, 4.7ms, Ultra160 A/V rated hard drive (samples)
Adaptec 19160 Ultra160 dual channel SCSI controller
Toshiba SCSI2, 40X CDROM drive
Echo Gina card with GSIF drivers
SoundBlaster Live! Platium
Matrox G200 8MB video card
Opcode Studio 64X MIDI interface
NEC floppy
Kingston 10BT NIC
Medium tower side panel access case w/300W power supply with fan
Dual fan upgrade for processor
Additional case fan

It would be nice if this config could deliver the whole ball of wax, ie.: GigaStudio\'ing with all 160 voices of polyphony while sequencing and recording to hard disk simultaneously. Then I could give my PII 266 to my wife. However, I\'m prepared to continue using the PII 266 to do the sequencing and master takes. I can then do my live recording and mixing with the new machine also.

Thanks again,
Tim http://www.elithic.com (\"http://www.elithic.com\")

[Sam]

That sounds like one heck of a system. The
only thing you will want to watch for if you
encounter problems is what devices are sharing
IRQ\'s with other devices. I\'d try and arrange
everything so everything gets its own IRQ although
win98 can fight you on this. Be aware that some
PCI slots will always share IRQ\'s with specific
other slots, the manual describes this if you
know what you\'re looking for.

cheers,
-s

[Cool7s_Dad]

Thanks for the info. I should be able to handle this ok since I can disable the IDE controllers on IRQs 14 and 15. But I will definitely pay close attention to this.

Oh, BTW, the cost for the entire system, piecing it together mail order was $2589. Considering that I paid $5200 for my first 286 8Mhz machine in 1986, it\'s a pretty darn good deal.

Tim http://www.elithic.com (\"http://www.elithic.com\")

[kirtap]

Hey Cool, I\'m in the market for a new computer too. Can you tell me where you purchased your gear? The price you quoted is excellent. Any suggestions would also be appreciated. How\'s your new computer working out? Thanks, Kirtap

[Cool7s_Dad]

Hey Kirtap:

The new computer is amazing. The first thing I noticed is that it only took 4 minutes to install Visual Studio. I thought: \"No freakin\' way! Something went terribly wrong with this installation.\" But I was mistaken. Everything installed perfectly and was completely ready to run. Visual C++, Visual J++, Visual Basic, Visual Interdev. I didn\'t know what to do next... I had planned on burning an hour or two...lol.

Darnit! I had a nicely typed list of everything I got, where I got it, and how much I paid for it but I can\'t find it now so I\'ll try to remember it all and dig through my receipts:

1) Antec Gemstone super mini-tower ATX case - $85 purchased locally at Altex. You can probably order it cheaper but by the time you pay shipping it\'s a wash.
2) Asus P3B-F motherboard with installed Pentium III 700Mhz Coppermine processor, heat sink, and dual fan - $699 purchased locally at IMS computers. Again, I found this a little cheaper online, but I wanted to be able to take it back if I had problems.
3) Toshiba 40X XM-6401B SCSI2 internal CDROM, refurbished - $46 - http://www.wholesale-club.com (\"http://www.wholesale-club.com\")
4) Matrox Millennium G200 8MB AGP2X OEM video card - $52 - also from Wholesale-club.
5) 1.44MB NEC floppy drive - $15 - Wholesale club again.
6) 512MB RAM (2 256MB DIMMs) - $404.12 - from Computer Craft, Inc. http://www.ccraft.net (\"http://www.ccraft.net\")
7)Quantum Atlas 10k 9.1GB Ultra160 drive - $305.00 - Hyper Microsystems http://www.hypermicro.com (\"http://www.hypermicro.com\")
8) Quantum Atlas 10k 18.2GB Ultra160 drive - $499.00 - Hypermicro again
9) Adaptec ASC-19160N Ultra160 controller with cables and drivers - $185.00 - Hypermicro
10) Soundblaster Live! Platinum sound card - $152.00 - http://www.componentsdirect.com (\"http://www.componentsdirect.com\")
11) Additional case fan - $8 - again from Altex locally

Total: $2450.00

Remember that you\'ll have to pay shipping for all this stuff... here\'s a rough shipping total: $60

Also note that I already had an Echo Gina card that I got at Guitar Center for $50 because it had no cable for the break-out box and it had no driver disk. I called Echo and the shipped both to me for free... Im had \'em in two days. I also spent $100 on a monitor switcher rather than buy a new monitor and try to find a place to put it next to my 21\" Cornerstone monitor. So I\'m running two computers on one monitor. But since this machine is soooo good, I\'m gonna hafta get a new monitor and give the PII 266 to my wife as promised... except... I\'m waiting with baited breath for GigaStudio to arrive just to be safe http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif


Also note that I already had an Opcode 64x external MIDI patchbay/interface.

As far as performance... here\'s what I have so far: I\'ve been able to do the following without any trouble:

1) Produce massive orchestration via the Gigasampler using AO and Gigapiano consuming most of the available 64 voices of polyphony while simultaneously...
2) Sequencing a 64 track score to Giga and 4 other synths using Cakewalk Overture 2.1.2 while simultaneously...
3) Singing and playing guitar while simultaneously...
4) Recording this mess on 6 separate tracks using ProAudio 9.04 while simultaneously...
5) Playing back 8 previously recorded tracks.

That\'s pretty darn good wouldn\'t you say? I can probably play back many more tracks with all this too, but that\'s all I had for this test. My Gina card system test software says I can play back 454 tracks while recording 2 if I want to!

(BTW, the best prices on audio gear are usually at http://www.zzounds.com) (\"http://www.zzounds.com)\")

So I\'m as happy as a freshly bathed hound dog in a roomful of wet cow patties http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

Peace,
Tim http://www.elithic.com (\"http://www.elithic.com\")

[Cool7s_Dad]

Oh, I almost forgot. Always check http://www.pricewatch.com (\"http://www.pricewatch.com\") and http://www.cnet.com (\"http://www.cnet.com\") for the latest prices and availability of any of this stuff. Pricewatch is usually up to date, but CNet has seller ratings. Each will sort the vendors into order by price.

Enjoy!
Tim http://www.elithic.com (\"http://www.elithic.com\")

[John Matrix]

Hi Cool7s_Dad,
that\'s a funky set-up.

But, have you thought about active cooling for your Quantums? - When I installed my Seagate Barracuda, I placed a 4\" fan right next to it and it works smooth and cool.

I know the Quantums are supposed to run less hot, but why risk anything with such an expensive pair of drives.

Here\'s a quote from the Atlas 10K review at Storagereview.com:

\"The drive operated warmly, though probably not excessively so, outside a drive cooler. It may work in a large, well-ventilated case without active cooling. In any other situation, however, drive coolers remain prudent.\"

If I was you, I\'d buy 2 drive coolers. Each one will fit one of your 5.25\" drive bays, and you can even have a temperature display, if you want.

Good luck