Building my DAW: Help me choose between these 3 Mobos plz!

[john c]

BEWARE: SUPER NERD TALK

I am going to build a DAW with AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU.
So I did tons and TONS of research (despite being an uber noob with hardware)
and found out that the latest Mobos for for AMD 64 chipsets are terrible for audio cause PCI-e has big bottlenecks and the Nvidia Nforce4 chips are meant for gamers. As a result, I have come up with 3 options for Mobos (utilizing VIA or Nforce3):

1. ABIT AV8
2. GIGABYTE K8NSNXP
3. MSI K8N NEO2 PLATINUM

Advantage of Abit AV8 is that its super stable and easy to install. Its supposedly a super solid board. Disadvantage is that I don't really see many examples of this as a proven DAW mobo. Also, I heard that theres issues with VIA and that NForce3 is definitely preferable for audio production. Now, many swear by Nvidia NForce3 for audio and so my choices are among MSI NEO2 and GIGA's K8NSNXP. Seems MANY people are using these are their DAWs on the Cubase/Sonar forums. But reading the reviews on newegg, they seem super unreliable. So PLEASE help me. Which Mobo should I go with? Many thanks in advance. OH and price isnt a factor amongst these.

[john c]

cmon tech-geeks. chime in

[Milkman John]

BEWARE: SUPER NERD TALK

I am going to build a DAW with AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU.
So I did tons and TONS of research (despite being an uber noob with hardware)
and found out that the latest Mobos for for AMD 64 chipsets are terrible for audio cause PCI-e has big bottlenecks and the Nvidia Nforce4 chips are meant for gamers. As a result, I have come up with 3 options for Mobos (utilizing VIA or Nforce3):

1. ABIT AV8
2. GIGABYTE K8NSNXP
3. MSI K8N NEO2 PLATINUM

Advantage of Abit AV8 is that its super stable and easy to install. Its supposedly a super solid board. Disadvantage is that I don't really see many examples of this as a proven DAW mobo. Also, I heard that theres issues with VIA and that NForce3 is definitely preferable for audio production. Now, many swear by Nvidia NForce3 for audio and so my choices are among MSI NEO2 and GIGA's K8NSNXP. Seems MANY people are using these are their DAWs on the Cubase/Sonar forums. But reading the reviews on newegg, they seem super unreliable. So PLEASE help me. Which Mobo should I go with? Many thanks in advance. OH and price isnt a factor amongst these.

to be honest, what you wanna look at is not chipset, but bus speed, the amount of ram it can handle(and what type), and whether or not it can handle serial ata...

i run a via chipset on the board i have now and have no problems with audio...and actaully, nvidia is notorious for updating their drivers way too much and keeping other manufacturers out of the loop, or keeping them out of the loop completely, so i'd go with via

implicity is what you wanna work with...do you wanna produce or do you wanna sit around and tweak your system every 2-3 weeks

[JOEYd hates you]

let me ask you this...

why do you need to have the sound built into the mother board?

Why not get a basic motherboard and then seperately add a Sound Blaster Audigy card or whatever high end sound card you want?

[Milkman John]

let me ask you this...

why do you need to have the sound built into the mother board?

Why not get a basic motherboard and then seperately add a Sound Blaster Audigy card or whatever high end sound card you want?

actually, you want to avoid it like the plague

you want the a/d converters seperate from the mobo

[JOEYd hates you]

actually, you want to avoid it like the plague

you want the a/d converters seperate from the mobo

that's my point.

[john c]

im NOT getting these mobos because of the onboard sound at all. they have the highest FSB speeds without using Nvidia NForce4. What other options do I have?

[Milkman John]

im NOT getting these mobos because of the onboard sound at all. they have the highest FSB speeds without using Nvidia NForce4. What other options do I have?

im lazy, could you post specs of each...

that would help me :)

[john c]

actually, you want to avoid it like the plague

you want the a/d converters seperate from the mobo

Dont plan on using real Synths anytime soon, just VSTs so I dont care about that (I dotn think ).

[JOEYd hates you]

SPECS:


http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/...es=1&model=175

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/produc...il.php?UID=607

http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard...8NSNXP-939.htm

[john c]

ABIT:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127181

NEO2:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130468

Giga:
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=248

[Milkman John]

Dont plan on using real Synths anytime soon, just VSTs so I dont care about that (I dotn think ).

actually, for monitoring purposes, you will...

especially with the more complicated synths like reaktor or the arturia line

[john c]

in this forum, these guys are all over the Neo2. But i dunno from Newegg it sounds like a scary board that might have many problems

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=444312

[Milkman John]

ABIT:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127181

NEO2:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130468

Giga:
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=248

i would go with the last two, HOWEVER...i would suggest going with a p4 chip due to alot of soft synths being made specificly for use on a p4 machine...they will work with it, but you'll get better quality from them on a p4 machine

but out of all of em, i would go with the giga

[Milkman John]

in this forum, these guys are all over the Neo2. But i dunno from Newegg it sounds like a scary board that might have many problems

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=444312

check out steinbergs forums, not cakewalks...

sonar was made for the computer illiterate...

great program, but not as powerfull as cubase

and not used in as many studios

also, might wanna check out computer music magazine...they do a parts review every so often, and mobo's are in it