cheeky16

I'll have to take a look at those programs tonight when I'm home. The higher end Phenom I will likely work. Have you done a fresh install of Windows lately?

I gotta be honest, I'm not sure that you would need to jump up to the Phenom II, especially the X6. You could likely ge away with some more basic components. What program are you using for audio and is there anything else you particularly do with it?

What doesn't your computer do that you want to do? I upgraded because of a fried mobo. I take it you're using a manufactured computer? If so post the brand and model. It will be easier if we know when else it has in it.

Music Production. needs massive power. It's been a while since I did anything, but stupid old me for some reason never clocked on that my system is AMD based. So, that said, what about AMD Processors? Talking AMD now... I have the Phenom II X6 1090t and it's a beast. $210 for the processor. Expect to spend easily $1000+ for case and all. My base build was about $1150 or so I think. I had a bluray drive and then upgraded to SSD and some others later. I think in total almost 2k in my comp.

Gotta be careful if you're trying to swap the processor only. I have an X2 that was running DDR not DDR2. Look up your computer model on the manufacturers website and see what socket and ram the specific set up is running.

Thanks, from some googling I haven't found any real adverse effects for 8x on a card this level. I'm not a gamer really so I'm not running a pair of top end cards so I'm sure I'll be fine. If you were running 2 cards for 3 monitors and weren't gaming across the three would you recommend SLI or Crossfire?

Ya man it's all about budget. I stretched mine a bit when I built mine. I really shouldn't have but I did.

Nerd warning (PCI-E). I understood it as he was asking about the motherboard limitations rather than the graphics card? The more expensive motherboards have 2x16 pci-e lanes. The graphics card will always use the maximum it can. I had looked into the eyefinity cards first for 3 monitors but it turns out mine won't display 3. So I dropped in an old 7600GT into the second slot. And yes the price of the mobo was double to have 2 16x slots. Looking at benchmarks the 16x to 8x does not seem to make much difference in fps and stuff. It's not like I'm running 2 6900s or anything either. :P

[spoiler=desktop (large-ish image)] It's not usually lit up this much :P Specs: MSI P43T-C51 motherboard Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz 4GB DDR2 ram (4x1GB) Asus EAH 4830 graphics card 1x 120GB HDD @7200 RPM 1x 500GB HDD @7200 RPM How do you get the wicked red water cooling? And how much does it cost to hook up a whole comp with water cooling like this? Perhaps different colors? That's not watercooling, I've just sleeved my PSU with UV reactive sleeving and I've hidden a couple of UV cathodes at the top and bottom. My current build looks entirely different now, I've changed the case and stuck an H50 in there as well. I'll post build pics once I'm finished :thumbup: That is pretty wicked. Where did you get the cathodes and sleeving? And are there many colors to choose from? I'm thinking I should do something to clean up my case a little. I might post some pics when I'm done but it's nothing special.

[spoiler=desktop (large-ish image)] It's not usually lit up this much :P Specs: MSI P43T-C51 motherboard Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz 4GB DDR2 ram (4x1GB) Asus EAH 4830 graphics card 1x 120GB HDD @7200 RPM 1x 500GB HDD @7200 RPM How do you get the wicked red water cooling? And how much does it cost to hook up a whole comp with water cooling like this? Perhaps different colors?

Go big or go home! I like my AMD but I don't game lol. Phenom II X6 1090t.

I was curious how much bandwidth each card uses. I want to run 3 screens and not necessarily in Crossfire mode with cards. At which point does putting a second card in hinder the main card. The second slot being filled drops my primary slot down to 8x. Would you recommend possibly 2 Radeon HD 5770 in Crossfire running at 8x each or something more powerful with more outputs. The 5770 I have now can only handle 2 monitors. It's the ASUS and I didn't realize this before. Trying to figure out the advantages and disadvantages of doing each. Basically what level of cards will get limited on the 8x.

Cool, thanks. I assumed it was brand related. Any idea how to figure out if specific cards will surpass the 8x bandwidth limit? I'm going to do a little searching myself now but I was feeling lazy. :P

So I'm sure this is a silly question but I've always been a little curious. What is the difference between SLI and Crossfire? And why do people build computers with these in mind. Is it simply to get better graphics performance for a single monitor or to run multiple monitors? Also does anyone know how to figure out when a graphics card will bottleneck on a PCI express 8x slot and need to run at 16x? Just curious because my mobo drops both slots to 8x when 2 cards are installed.

I like your idea of going to a SSD for the OS. Personally I'd jump to the 60Gb and install the games I play most and the programs you run. 30Gb pretty much is the OS and not a lot more once everything is updated and running. Also you need to take into consideration that you're spending half your budget on your graphics card. As the SSD does not make the performance of the overall computer change much I wouldn't recommend you get one thinking it will change much. I have a 60Gb OCZ Vertex 2 and I love it but it was an afterthought on my build and haven't really sent many people down that road. If it's a consideration to spend the money on it then go for it, you likely won't regret the speed benefits of program start times. To be honest when I start working again this summer I will likely buy a second 60Gb and run them in Raid 0 for even faster starts. :) Extreme overkill yes! If you're thinking of the 10,000RPM HDD don't bother going that route. Most reviews I read when picking a SSD said that solid state destroyed the WD Velociraptor. It all depends on whether you want to spend the money or not. I'm sure the 7,200 would be fine for all gaming. I am also not really a gamer on the computer and therefore do not have much to say about running high end games. It would be nice to see some pics of the rig once you decide to build it though!

Thanks Laura, no more posting for me when I should be sleeping. The Java website still says Apple supplies their own version is all. I'm sure this will soon change.

Doing a little more research for you in the hard drive category I found the fastest HDD is the Westerrn Digital Velociraptor. The cheapest drive was $130 for a 150Gb and they max out at 600Gb for $300 so you're not going to get a lot of space with these ones. One site I looked on posted read speeds above 130Mb/s. They are one of the only 10,000 rpm drives out there and don't really have much of a market. If it were me doing the build I would step up and go with a 60Gb SSD for like $130 and a 1Tb drive for storage. I don't specify what kind of drive because for file storage it likely isn't a big deal if its super fast. They about $55-70 for the range from green to high quality. If you aren't interested in jumping into solid state then a 7,200 rpm drive i would say is a must. Unless you want to get the Velociraptor. But reviews on the OCZ Vertex 2 that i bought had people that had upgraded from velociraptor and said it wasnt even a fair comparison. The OCZ destroyed the velociraptor in boot times for os and programs. These are all things that need to play into your budget and where you want your rig to go. If you set out with a normal Tb HDD now you could upgrade to SSD in a few months when the prices drop a bit more as well. If you are interested at all with the ssd post back and I can give you a little more info on them. I can also check some more benchmarks and stuff for you. With all that said, don't go ssd and cut money out of other parts, if budget does not allow for one then think about it for a future upgrade. After all upgrades are kind of the point in building your own desktop. :P

Or you could go all out and get a blu ray burner. :P

Looks good to me. I like the Western Digital but that's all I've ever owned.

It doesn't matter if they're available online or not. Several people, including myself, have (or had) driver issues even when it comes straight from the hardware distributor. And while no, you cannot install other drivers on OS X, you can revert back to previous versions. For Flash, you're free to download it from Adobe's site -- I'm currently using the new beta (ie, not distributed by Apple). For Java, you can revert back to previous versions and, unless I am misinformed, Apple no longer distributes its own Java. Adobe does not distribute Java for the Apple, it's part of the updates that Apple sends out. And I currently am having driver issues on my windows desktop so they do still exist.

I'd like to clarify that SATA 2 maxes at 300GB/s and the Vertex 2 at 285MB/s.

That's exactly right. If something goes wrong there is only one company to blame. Can't be passing blame to microsoft or to ati or nvidea. Apple designs everything to fit together. If there is a weak part in the machine it is there own. It's nice that there is no need to go searching for drivers ever. You appear to be making out that apple make 100% of the computers components. That.. isn't true. They use ATI cards, Intel and/or AMD cards, and probably more. I'd like to add that you don't need to go searching for drivers on a windows machine unless you've reinstalled windows because they're already installed. Your last point confuses me - Microsoft do not make the drivers, the manufacturers do. They want their parts to run as smoothly as possible on a windows machine, thus surely they would make the drivers work easily? Which they do. So I'm not sure what you're really trying to say. Apple only uses a select few components from the manufacturers like ATI and Intel and therefore can customize their systems directly with them. I'm sure the cards from ATI and Intel are not the same as any other brand. Apple probably has a completely custom built unit for them.

Ya, the entire point of having PCI Express SSD is to eliminate the SATA bottleneck. The OCZ RevoDrive PCI SSD supports read speeds up to 540MB/s The OCZ Vertex 2 runs on SATA 2 maxing out at 300MB/s You're looking at about $225 for the Vertex 2 120GB and $310 for the RevoDrive. I wouldn't doubt that soon there will be more SSD supporting SATA 3. Currently the Vertex 2 has a max read of 285MB/s so it is still under the 300MB/s bottleneck of the SATA 2. I did a fair bit of looking into SSD recently as I just installed a 60GB Vertex 2 into my machine.

That's exactly right. If something goes wrong there is only one company to blame. Can't be passing blame to microsoft or to ati or nvidea. Apple designs everything to fit together. If there is a weak part in the machine it is there own. It's nice that there is no need to go searching for drivers ever.

Start your own thread mate, kinda counts as thread hijacking. OT: I would be wary of having 2 cards crossfired/sli'd as an initial build, you're kinda slowed by that 8x pci. Just go for a 6970 I guess, or hell, a 6990 XD Thanks, I'll create a new one. :)