Yello
Me and my girl are looking to buy a new computer, a sorta allround machine for office applications, image manipulation, gaming and DVDs, my renoising and other sound creation. Basically any new computer would do now, but to make it last a couple of years, we’re looking to spend something like 1000-1500 euros sans display. There’s some decent looking packages Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu Siemens are offering here in Finland, but we really have no need for the basic input/output devices, optical drives, operating systems or pre-installed software. So, I’m turning to stores that would build the machine we need. So here’s the thing: I’ve been in the dark from the cpu developments for some time and basically don’t know jack about them anymore (except that Intel’s still the expensive one), so I don’t know what we need! I know I want 2GB of RAM and 200-300GB worth of HDD but that’s about it. The three setups I now have on my list have processors as follows:
Hewlett-Packard PAW5151: Intel Pentium 4 640 HT
Fujitsu Siemens SCALEO Ta A64 X2 380-20: AMD Athlon 64 x2 (dual core)
Custom built setup frame: AMD Athlon 3200+ S939 Boxed
How do these relate to each other? And more importantly, which would be the best for Renoise? I think Hyper Threading and Dual Core are there to boost multitasking but is there actually a performance loss compared to a traditional cpu when running software more or less dedicatedly, like in a fullscale Renoise session? Also, suggestions for replacements of the processor in the custom setup would nice to hear, aswell as the reasons behind them.
Out of these three, the HP and FS are priced the same although FS has only 1GB of RAM. The custom one is considerably lower in price because I could strip off all the extra junk. HP has the loveliest case, with tiny doors for optical drives and usb/fw/sound jacks and the memorycard reader that 's embedded in the case thus taking not stealing any expansion bays while there’s surprisingly (at least to me) few free expansion slots with the PCI-E graphics card fitted. FS is the ugliest with its dumb blue leds glowing at the bottom. The custom one would now be assembled into a Antec Sonata II Piano case but I heard that there have been some serious heat issues with that particular case so currently I’m thinking of going with Nexus Breeze.
Please, do share any thoughts and ideas that might have arisen while reading this post. They will be considered invaluable because where else am I going to get Renoise specific recommendations for processors if not here?
And in case anyone was worried or wondering about how will the comp sound: No more integrated audio, I’m getting an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 as I understand it’s often referred to as THE cost efficient sound interface.
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