Newcomer in the PC jungle... Help and advices !

[sirbellog]

Hello, everybody !
As a Mac user, I know strictly NOTHING about PC hardware… and considering the purchase of GS, I went to the music retailers I know, here in France.
They sell « all-in-one » bundles (computer, card, hard disk, GS) in which the PC is quite more expensive than the ones with same specs advertised in several mags (such as PIII 1Ghz or 933 Mhz, 256 Mo, 40 Go, etc…)…
Well, when I ask them « why ? » they answer that « bad PCs won’t work with GS »… Mac users don’t know about « bad » macs… so I’m puzzled and try to investigate, because saving some 300-400 bucks might help me start my GS sound library, but not if I have to pay it by mal- or non-functions....
Please help me ! Here are my questions :
- Am I wrong to say that the most important in a PC is the motherboard ? If so, are there names or models which are prohibited for GS use ? Is there one or two things about them I should absolutely know not to feel quite disapinted after purchase ?
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- Generally speaking, are there brands (Compaq, IBM, whatever)… which always are « safe choices » in GS respect ?
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-Is there any other important things I need to know about PC’s guts before buying it by myself, in order to hope I\'ll have it running with GS troublefree ?
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- Is there anything which might appear as a « plus » offer (graphic card, sound card) BUT that might also reveal itself a cause for GS problems ?
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- Is there anything I do not mention here and may be of first matter when being faced to the machine’s strange behaviour ?
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Anyone willing to help is welcome to say what he (she) thinks by posting his (her) reply ! ! !
But please let’s try to remain clear and generic, I don’t intend to become a PC expert by digesting exotic subtleties that might occur only once in a century…
THANK YOU

[Lucas]

Howdy,

Here\'s a bit of data for you:

Any of the Pentium III & IV\'s or the newer AMD processors should work fine.

There are so many variations in motherboards that make choosing difficult. The chipset is important and I\'ve read that the intel 815 chipsets are the most reliable, even more so than later versions.

Go with 512K of memory, especially since the prices are so good right now.

Finally, pc\'s have these things called drivers which are software programs that make hardware operate. BIOS\'s have drivers, soundcards have drivers, any piece of hardware has drivers. It is important to keep up with the newest drivers for each piece of equipment. Fortunately, this is easy to do since manufacturers provide downloads at their websites.

A high end video card can sometimes be a resource hog, so you\'ll want to avoid that.

I know you can read a lot of horror stories on the instability of Gigastudio but I\'ve had no serious problems and I\'m sure many here will say the same thing.

Au Revoir
Lucas

[Karel]

ello sirbellog, i can only share your confusion, sorry :=((

I did buy a PC from music retailer only to find out my soundcard ( Terratec EWS 88MT) didn\'t have multiclient GSIF drivers, ie my ASIO audio drivers and GSIF driver couldn\'t be active at the same time, it can now since the last driver upgrade somewhere in March 2001 ( bought my PC in November 2000 :=)) ), so I think the choice of soundcard may be the most important issue

( as for GS itself, nothing but good vibes, never had any problem using it, being the ultimate non-technical person on this planet)

I want to add one thing to your questions: I was told ( by someone presumably knowledgeable) that it is no use having more then 128M of RAM when running Windows 98 because the OS does not use more then 128M anyway, this is probably nonsense and I don\'t want to waste anyones time here but can somebody shed a light on the amount of RAM needed, all I read on this forum is \'the more the better\'

a confused RAM buyer

[Lucas]

<<I want to add one thing to your questions: I was told ( by someone presumably knowledgeable) that it is no use having more then 128M of RAM when running Windows 98 because the OS does not use more then 128M anyway, this is probably nonsense >>

You\'re right, a 128MB limit on Windows is nonsense. However, I understand that Windows 98 can have trouble with more than 512MB ram due to running out of memory address locations. There is data on this on the MS knowledge base website.