Hi My uncle has just offered me his old (old) pc. It's specs are roughly this. Cpu-700mhz Memory-128mb (i think ddr) Graphics 32mb That's all i know, as that all he gave me. I dont know the names or anything of the graphics or type fo cpu but it works so im not that bothered. Anyway my question is if i wack the memory of this thing up to around 1gb and upgrade the graphics card to a cheapo Ati 256mb Card would this provide a fairly good audio production pc? I don't really want to go upgrading motherboards and cpu's as im looking at alot more then im willing to spend on this. Thanx
It wouldn't be extremely powerful, no. It might be passable for very basic sound engineering operations, but anything with realtime processing demands is going to absolutely choke on that hardware. Also, updating the video wouldn't do anything for that system, really, unless you plan on gaming. Again though the bottleneck is going to be the CPU and possibly the chipset also.
Ok, thanx anti-trend. Im going to have a look at the processors and see if i can get any bargins as i was thinking about using it for vidoee diting also as my laptop has gone in for repair twice in one month and it s just not relible anymore. Thanx again
I don't know...you may want to consider just building a low-end Sempron64 rig instead. While, yes, it'd cost more than upgrading that 700MHz box, it's also not going to be limited to a 1GHz processor cap like you're looking at (unless you know that the motherboard supports the Tualtin core Pentium 3's---1.26 & 1.4GHz). For a little over $400, you could piece together a nice rig for what you're wanting to do,with 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive.
Real-Time audio production is very resource heavy, and your 700MHz just won't cut it! I have doubts as to whether the fastest Pentium 3 1.4GHz would cut it either. I suppose it depends on the production software and VST plugins (if any) you are using. Cubase SX2 for example requires a lot of power, and at least 512MB RAM. I managed to run it on a Celeron 2.8 GHz, 512MB RAM fairly successfully. But as I added more tracks, my computer just collapsed! I could barely play a single note on the Moog Modular V VST synth. You don't need to bother with the graphics card, but a sound card is obviously important. Your onboard sound card (assuming it onboard) won't cut it at media production. They sound bad enough anyway! You will need to look for a sound card with ASIO drivers, I wouldn't bother with Creative products as they are more for films and games. Check out some of M-Audio's cards like the audiophile range. They will cost a lot more, but are specifically designed for music production.
Hey I just got given a new motherboard from a friend of mine, which will support a 1.8ghz cpu (athlon) but can be over clocked to 2.4 ghz. If i over clock this and add 1gb worth of ddr and also add a decent sound card. Do you think that might cut it? I don't really have 400 bucks to spend, and i know what im trying to do may be considered expensive but i have to somehow find away around that. So with a 2,4 ghz cpu, 1gb worth of ram and a decent sound card am i looking at fairly decent audio production. Also i should really describe what i mean by audio production. I have adobe audition for most of the work, software wise. I plan to record sound (obviously) to the pc and mix it will sounds on my pc and lay sounds from my midi keyboard to the background. I also want to occasionally strea, just simple live audio to my site. NO music in the background just my voice. Thanx
That'll give you a much better solution. That CPU and 1GB RAM will do the job quite nicely. A 7200RPM or faster hard drive would be desireable as well for video editing, but probably doesn't matter quite as much for music editing from what I understand.
That's true, unless you will be recording enough tracks simultaneously to saturate the HDD's maximum burst rate, which isn't incredibly high on a 5400RPM IDE drive. I would go with a 7200RPM SATA drive just for principle.
