Need some motherboard recommendations

[HedsSpaz]

Hey gang, I'm specing out a new system for a friend and I need some motherboard recommendations. From the details he's given me he want's something along the lines of a high end gaming system approaching a low end workstation. He's really into the graphics and audio dealy and he's in his first year of college. He unfortunately hasn't given me a price range to work with as he doesn't really know how much he has to spend. I get the impression though that he's willing to go fairly high.

That said I want to give him a range of options. Basically I'm thinking 4 base configurations, dual athlon, single athlon, dual p4, and single p4. The only key is that all boards need to have IDE raid. Now, if you tell me that a certain board is the top of the line and I should just get a seperate PCI raid controller that is also fine, but he needs the performance boost that raid will offer for the work that he is going to be doing.

The other big variable that is a good bit out of my league is a sound card. Specifically, a semi-pro level sound card geared towards audiophiles and editing work. I honestly don't even know where to begin here. However, again, I'm willing to accept as an answer 'get an audigy/santa cruz/other high end consumer card'.

So, the summary is that I need 4 motherboard recommendations:
Dual Athlon
Single Athlon
Dual P4
Single P4
must have IDE raid in some form
and a semi-pro audio card for editing.

Many thanks in advance my good old friends of the MURC.
Ian

[Wombat]

If he really needs the boost, no on-board IDE RAID will do it, so scratch that idea. Doc can recommend the latest in Promise's SX line.

Scratch off the Dual P4 as well, because that's Xeon country, and I doubt you want to get into that price range.

[Ribbit]

Unless you know an SMP box would really be a benefit for him, I'd scratch the dual Athlon off as well. The MPs aren't available as fast as the XPs are, and the chipsets are a little dated and not engineered for blazing speed.

[Guru]

Yes dual P4 means Xeon! The price difference of the cpus is not that high but the motherboards/cases etc are!

[Wombat]

Some people are using Terratex cards for high-quality audio, and are quite happy.

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/apr02/articles/terratecdmx6.asp

[Kurt]

Re: Need some motherboard recommendations

Originally posted by HedsSpaz
Hey gang, I'm specing out a new system for a friend and I need some motherboard recommendations. From the details he's given me he want's something along the lines of a high end gaming system approaching a low end workstation. He's really into the graphics and audio dealy and he's in his first year of college. He unfortunately hasn't given me a price range to work with as he doesn't really know how much he has to spend. I get the impression though that he's willing to go fairly high.

That said I want to give him a range of options. Basically I'm thinking 4 base configurations, dual athlon, single athlon, dual p4, and single p4. The only key is that all boards need to have IDE raid. Now, if you tell me that a certain board is the top of the line and I should just get a seperate PCI raid controller that is also fine, but he needs the performance boost that raid will offer for the work that he is going to be doing.

The other big variable that is a good bit out of my league is a sound card. Specifically, a semi-pro level sound card geared towards audiophiles and editing work. I honestly don't even know where to begin here. However, again, I'm willing to accept as an answer 'get an audigy/santa cruz/other high end consumer card'.

So, the summary is that I need 4 motherboard recommendations:
Dual Athlon
Single Athlon
Dual P4
Single P4
must have IDE raid in some form
and a semi-pro audio card for editing.

Many thanks in advance my good old friends of the MURC.
Ian

Forget IDE RAID for best performance. You have to go SCSI.

Given we don't have a budget, it's a bit tricky to make recommendations....

Single CPU systems have the actual fastest CPUs whereas duallies have slower ones. For some applications a single CPU will be faster (type of application, OS overhead, other constraints, etc...)...

A middle of the "price-bunch" config would be:

-P4 3.06GHz or 2.8GHz
-Asus P4PE i845PE Motherboard (Granite Bay is not faster yet)
-1024MB RAM DDR333 (DDR400 if you want to overclock the RAM to DDR355 -but it's not said the CPU will follow and the price difference is high)
-Adaptec ASR-2100S U160 RAID 32MB 32bit/33MHz PCI (there are no 64bits/66MHz PCI motherboards I know of that aren't server boards) - more RAM if you want
-a couple of Seagate Cheetahs 15K3 36GB in RAID 0 -or more for other RAID levels. Or some Fujitsu 10K rpms (see storagereview.com)
-a "stupid" SB Audigy 2 player.
-Labtec 6.1 THX speaker set.
-High-end powersupply (check firingsquad.com for the how-to on how to recognize a good one)
-Preferably a Maxi Tower (Thermaltake has good ones, well ventilated).
-your brand of DVD/CDRW/DVD+-RW...maybe a floppy too...
-Ati Radeon 9700pro All-In-Wonder (for games + DV) or your choice of Matrox video editing boards
-Eizo 21/22" CRT colour stable and preferably tuned for his "work" environment. (TFTs aren't particularly great for video editing yet)

[chaoliang]

Is a SCSI system not a consideration? I still think it's better than IDE raid. The big disadvantage is the price of a SCSI system.

[Kurt]

there's not THAT much of a difference I you can live with "only" 10K drives...sure the adapter costs a lot more than let's say a High Point UATA-133 IDE RAID, but the 3Ware, Adaptec and Promise ones aren't so cheap...(depending on models, etc)

[Ribbit]

And the Highpoint RAID cards suck anyway.

[Taz]

As far as IDE RAID controllers go the Promise SX4000 is about the best price/performance wise, supports RAID 5 has on-board processor and cache and best of all costs around $150.00. More details here :-

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=94&familyId=2

The advantage of going with a dual AMD board is they support 64bit/66Mhz cards which is an advantage when it comes to RAID or SCSI cards.

[Kurt]

problem is we don't know what progs will be used most...so it's hard to say which is best between single and dual cpu config for him...

[Pace]

Originally posted by Taz
The advantage of going with a dual AMD board is they support 64bit/66Mhz cards which is an advantage when it comes to RAID or SCSI cards.

I think you can get the same with dual and maybe single P4s.

[Taz]

Originally posted by Pace
I think you can get the same with dual and maybe single P4s.

True but they seem to be only server boards from people like Super Micro and Tyan.

[Cobos]

If you are going to SCSI I would seriously consider the Tekram DC-390U3W which in pricewatch now is approx 165$. From the test storagereview did it is same speed or faster (1-3%) than the similar Adaptec and costs a lot less. Team that up with a Cheetah 15k.3 18GB disk for boot and programs, and then 2 fast IDE disks for RAID 0 if you MUST have that... And with only 1 disk on the SCSI chain the PCI speed is no problem.

Cobos

[HedsSpaz]

SCSI is very definately outside the realm of option. The guy I'm building this for does not need that much of a performance boost. The reason I want to give him the option of a dual cpu system is because he's going to be doing some heavy photoshop work and some audio mixing and editing. Both photoshop and most pro/semi-pro audio programs make good use of dual cpu's. Furthermore, the advantage of a simple IDE raid stripe across two drives is quite noticeable over a single drive. I suppose I could simply spec 2 drives so that he can use one of the drives as a scratch drive, which would probably provide enough of a performance boost as to make raid unneccesary. However, IDE raid is inexpensive enough that I figured it was probably worth it to go ahead and go that route.

That said, I was really after mobo recommendations here, not a debate over the merits and pitfalls of IDE raid vs SCSI. I do appreciate the help though.

I should be able to get the sound card situation sorted out now one way or another, thanks much for the great info cking4!

Ian