CPU: Celery 3.6Ghz or AMD64 3500+?

[digitalwanderer]

My buddy wants me to upgrade his PC to record some tunes on, he needs firewire and "a faster CPU card"....

He's using onboard sound to record, is that insane? Sounded like it to me, I was going to give him my Audigy2 and 3500+ and see if that worked...but I found out he has a Celery 3.6Ghz which SOUNDS fast to me, but I know nothing of Intel at that time.

Which is the better CPU for music encoding/recording?

[digitalwanderer]

Oh yeah, the big thing is he wants to keep his OS install intact....all the songs he's recording for some weird German death metal label are on it. :???:

[digitalwanderer]

Ok, it gets more interesting. He bought one of these: http://www.presonus.com/fp10.html

Problem: He has no firewire to hook it up with?

I'm confused, I'm having him pick up my kids and bring the part over and we're gonna see what the what is then. :)

[Skrying]

The A64 would destroy it...

Also, he should be able to simply back up his files.

He might need to purchase a firewire PCI card, or if the motherboard you're giving him has firewire he could use that.

[digitalwanderer]

He also has one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829121001

So I installed the Audigy2 and sent him home happy.

[Albuquerque]

Wow, I never knew Intel made a 3.6Ghz Celeron. I was about to call bullshit on you, but google > me. It's a single core, 512kb L2 cache, 533mhz bus chip on an LGA775 socket all based on the Presc"hot" 65nm platform.

You could have him pop for ~$100 and pick up a Pentium-D 805, which is the same bus speed but a dual core, 2 x 1Mb L2 cache 2.66Ghz part that would go probably 3x faster than what he's got now.

Of course, you could also do the entire system board swap to move him to an AMD platform, but I'm not sure it will be any cheaper.

[Davros]

if he just wants to "record some tunes" is he really in need of a faster cpu ?

[Albuquerque]

if he just wants to "record some tunes" is he really in need of a faster cpu ?

Very true. I've 'recorded some tunes' on my old P2-333 rig with a Sound Blaster of some flavor waaayyy back in the day. The only part that required any measureable amount of horsepower was making changes to the raw sample with software -- like echo, reverb, etc.

Even then it was certainly "usable" in speed.

[Davros]

now days you can add reverb, chorus, ring modulator, distortion, flanger, normalizer, frequency shifter,
vocal morpher, pitch shift, parametric eq, wah wah in real time
without even hitting the cpu if you have a live or above
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1993/audyc9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[tongue_of_colicab]

http://z.about.com/d/greekfood/1/0/5/7/veggies_celery_406.jpg

So intel's gone green with smart veggie cpu's :D

Anyway, the a64 would eat the celeron for breakfast. Keeping the OS intact isnt going to work, but why bother? cant you backup all his files and just put them back after a new install? that shouldnt give a problem at all.

[digitalwanderer]

The Audigy2 fixed what ails him just fine and now he's trying to figure out his Personus thingy, but that's just a problem of him figuring out new hardware rather than any hardware problems per se.

His band did a recording gig last night and it all went well, but I will recommend the new CPU to him as that sounds like a fantastic investment for what he wants to do with that rig and I'm now in the market for a new sound card...preferably a non-Creative gaming card that this dude is gonna buy me since he's now officially in love with my Audigy2. :lol:

You should see what I'm doing with the case & PSU his wife dropped off for me to build them a rig for their son with... :D

Thanks for all the advice/input, much appreciated.

[Skrying]

non-Creative gaming card? Lol, no such thing exists Digi. Well, sorta. I want a AuzenTech Auzen X-Fi Prelude (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156005) personally, as it has the X-Fi chip for gaming and other features I want.

[digitalwanderer]

Do they write/supply their own drivers? :|

I know it's an impossible goal, but I felt it truly worthy of exploring.