The Watering Hole

I'm building a new PC (first one in 8 years :)). I bought an M-Audio ProFire610 last year and love it. My current sound card works fine but is old, the EMU 0404. Anyone have a suggestion for say a PCIe card that will be good for both gaming and music making? Thanks.

1-800-CALLCHARGER    ;)

Echo Audiofire, rock solid drivers. I have an Echo Layla 24/96, since 2003, and it has never given me a single problem, ever. If I ever build another I will go for the http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/FireWire/AudioFirePre8/specs.php

Kabala — Feb 01, 2011
I'm building a new PC (first one in 8 years :)). I bought an M-Audio ProFire610 last year and love it. My current sound card works fine but is old, the EMU 0404. Anyone have a suggestion for say a PCIe card that will be good for both gaming and music making? Thanks.

I'd go with the built in sound for gaming.  It's going to have the best compatibility and they sound damn good--typically that's Realtek or something like that. And get a different device for recording.  A million great devices out there, you already have the profire... that will work.

Thanks for the replies. I suppose I'll consider just using the Realtek sound then (for the gaming side of things). The sound on the mobo I'm looking at  http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0350749 is supposedly pretty solid as itegrated stuff goes. I was just figuring a seperate card would ease the load on the cpu and that maybe there was a universally loved card both music recordists/gamers swore by.

What are you getting, an i5 or i7?  And you're worried about the load on the CPU?  If 7-channel audio used more than 1% of your CPU I'd be shocked.  Worry about your graphics card, get a GTX 460-class card, that's going to reduce load more than anything else for gaming.

LOL, I know, right. i7 is what I'm getting. I'm leaning towards the Radeon 6950 or 6970....might as well, they just hit the street and are crossfireX compliant...this way in a year or whenever, if I needed even more GPU power I could just pick up a second one (crossfireX boards will allow up to 4 compatible graphic cards at once  :o)!!

Yeah, sound isn't going to be an issue.  Video takes 8 or 16 lanes of PCIe, but audio only needs one.

Just stumbled on this over the weekend, but the Intel 2600K CPUs (about $329) can be overclocked and run just as fast as the 980X chips (about $999).  This from a guy who creates DAW's ("2600k @ 4.7 is dead even with a 980x @ 4ghz...").

So if you really need some power that will save you some $$$.

Whoops, quick update...  Intel announced that they had a small problem with one of the supplemental chips which has been fixed, unfortunately that means the motherboards for the 2600's will be backordered until February or so.

Yeah, I know.  I picked up my i5 2500k and my 1155-based motherboard on Friday.  The intel chipsets was recalled on Monday.  Dammit. So now I have all my parts and probably won't have a motherboard until march.

The 2500k is the sweet spot though.  On air cooling only it can be over clocked to 4.5 ghz, I think the 2600k can go a little higher but not much, and it's a $100 difference in price, $180 vs $280.  Come mid march those are the way to go.  But compatible only with the 1155 chipsets, which is being reworked.  

Here's a good article about the issue from Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cougar-point-sandy-bridge-sata-error,12108.html

And more from the guy who builds DAW's:

up to 5% over 3yrs may see the issue.  got news thats less than the standard fail rate of boards in the same time period..
especially asus..

if you put your OS on sata 600 and your audio drive problem solved..
put the samples on sata 300 or buy a add in raid card.. back up ext..
no issue..

for the record this is the first time i know of that any manufacturer has done a recall on a chipset..

Personally, I'm more disappointed about hearing that Asus mobo's seem to fail more than others (from his side comment above) - I've always preferred them.  Maybe I'll have to try something different this time?

After 3 years you build a new computer...

Intel has announced that the number is 5% within 3 years may fail.  The reality, according to what I've been hearing, is much higher.  And also, it's not complete failure, it's degradation of performance.  It still works, but less.  You start to get data corruption, or your performance slows, or your drive won't read correctly, or write correctly.  What I've heard is that the degradation is likely to occur on EVERY board with the chipset, but that complete failure is relatively unlikely.  Essentially, you'll lose data but not the motherboard.  Which, for a set of components designed for high performance, is not acceptable.

Every manufacturer is going to replace the boards. Most online retailers don't even offer the 1155 architecture anymore, and won't until new product arrives.  I still think this is the way to go... the advancements in the SandyBridge architecture go well beyond just the overclocking capabilities of the K chips.  The chipset outclasses the previous architecture in just about every way, see the details here:  http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083.

As far as this being a new thing, it's not.  Chipset replacements and recalls have happened before, many times.  Often there's a software fix, or the exposure is limited to only a certain subset of systems.  This is the first time I've heard where a common component on all boards with a single architecture (1155) have failed.  It's unusual in that sense, but given that the chipset has only been public for about a month, it could have been much worse.

Heh - with a conservative estimate of $700 million for Intel to fix, it doesn't sound too small though!  :o

Back on semi-original topic, gaming video cards can be extremely noisy (ones that have fans on them) - that may be a consideration if you are putting it in your DAW.

Yep, the whole art of building a quiet PC could be (and is) a forum's worth in itself.  It seems to be possible to swap out the fan on my new video card, but not without some work. As a side note, for a pure DAW, the SandyBridge "K" chips contain a full-fledged, HD-res video chip on the CPU. For a pure DAW with no gaming needs, you wouldn't even need a video card.  That's as quiet as it gets.