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RE: the good old Mac/PC question (was: looping observation)



At 06:33 PM 8/1/2004, you wrote:
>>   I still only use Athlon
>>CPUs in my PCs.
>
>hm... so there is something about Athlon which is better for audio?
>others say it cannot be a cheap PC but a business one?
>or the point is configuration?
>or non use of Explorer?
>seems pretty hard to get the right criteria...

it is far more complicated than that....

Which Athlon? (or which Pentium?)
Which chipset? (this probably matters even more than the cpu.)
which motherboard?
what memory is installed?
what is the FSB speed?
what is the memory speed?
cas latency?
which hard disk?  which ATA interface? ATA100? ATA133? SATA?
which graphics chip? standalone? integrated?
AGP 1x? 4x? 8x? PCI express?
what peripherals are installed?
how do the all various peripherals load the busses?
do the peripherals add to cpu load or offload it?
which bios?
which drivers? versions?

etc, etc, etc.

If you are building a performance PC and you don't understand these 
things, 
you might as well turn the lights out and throw darts at the dell catalog.

If you are interested in performance, there are a lot more variables than 
the cpu. And there is far more below the hood that affects you than what 
you see looking at the windows desktop. Going for the cheapest hardware 
can 
mean a huge compromise if you don't know what you really need. No version 
of windows can save you if the hardware isn't up to it. (Be prepared to 
spend a whole bunch of time at anandtech, tomshardware, etc to figure it 
out....)


>good thing about the mac is that you quickly find out which one you need 
>:-)

even there, do you understand the difference between G4 and G5? DDR memory 
versus SDR? DDR FSB? Dual CPU? single? etc? There are many less choices, 
but still plenty of ways to go wrong.

>>Next desktop for me will be G5 whenever I get around to it (not soon).  
>Next
>>notebook is either TabletPC or a G4, prolly G4.
>
>yeah, a tabletPC would be perfect for stage! but do they have the 
>necessary features and price?

http://www.pricewatch.com

kim


______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com