My new computer...feedback please

My old desktop has been driving me crazy the last month, and since I have been considering up grading...bye bye..

I bought a Compaq Pesario SR1320NX..
It has a 3100+ AMD Sempron processor..my first non Pentium in 7 years..
512 ram is ready to accomadate 2 gig of ram.
It has a DVD RW/CD- RW drive.
7 USB 2.0 connecters.
A multi card reader and Firewire..
It also has video inputs.

The sales person knew I needed it for music production..He referred me to studies done by PC mag...There were a lot of plusses for this processor, although the P4 did too...

Did I make a mistake..or will this light my fire..
Comments please...I can exchange it for a P4 equivilent..
Frank R. what about multi tasking in the soft synth world...will I be disapointed?

AMD people give me your pitch..

This is for my studio use only, not for gigging..



[This message has been edited by Fran Carango (edited 06-10-2005).]

Fran, I am almost certain any computer you buy today will have sufficient resources or can be upgraded to handle anything the soft synth world can throw at you. Here are some things to look at:

2 Hard Drives, 7200rpm, 8 mb cache

You need this if you are going to run heavy duty samplers like Kontakt, GigaStudio, etc. This is to accommodate streaming from a hard drive without crackles & pops. Two hard drives are needed to achieve this (one for the applications & OS and the other for your samples).

Sound Cards

At some point you may wish to add one of the so-called professional sound cards, e.g., RME, M-Audio, Frontier, Echo and so on.

RAM

In future you may wish to add some more RAM to say 2 GB. This will speed up your computer.

Processor

A short few years ago it was safer to get a Pentium over any other including AMD for music or multimedia applications. Today this is less of an issue.

Again I think you should have no problem. Just ensure you can build it up to meet your future needs re: soft synths.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 06-11-2005).]

Fran,

I really don't believe you'll have a problem and I agree with Frank. Today's computers rock, and have more features than anyone really needs. The main thing, or course, when doing music is to turn off as many things in the background as possible. Then the computer is dedicated to the task at hand and will not slow down or have problems in processing.

Good Luck,

Gary

AMD should be fine Fran. More and more I see pros / semi pros that are singing the praises of AMD / Athlon vs even the P4's for certain audio tasks and programs.

I have one of each, and both work equally well for me.. I might even give a slight nod to my AMD 2.4 ( 2.0 real world) Ghz PC vs my P4 2.8 laptop, with the understanding that the PC has a bit more RAM and a few less processes at start up than my laptop does.

I agree with the rest of what was said here. You can't go wrong by at least doubling the Ram you have now, but going over 2 Ghz isn't a bad idea either if you are going to be doing more than a little multitasking, and turning off processes that you don't need is always a good idea.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 06-10-2005).]

Fran

I've been using an AMD Athlon 1.3ghz for about two and a half years now with now problem. I did upgrade my sound card to a Delta 44 and I have 768 of ram. I use Sonar and Soundforge with no problems. Your computer is newer and fast than mine so you should be fine.

Peter

AVP (audio video photo) people usually tend more for macs or Athlon, however i am not a real fan of either the Athlon will perform quite well. Athlon will exceed in graphics and audio however a Pentium will be faster are common tasks.

Phil

[This message has been edited by Pennywizz6 (edited 06-11-2005).]

Thanks for all the responses...I really started to like the AMD 3100+ processor..I read that it really shines when you overclock it..I had a 256 Graphic card [pc card] installed...This is really a great computer for games...

But...after a back and forth determination, and advice from experts in the tech field..I was convinced that a Pentium 4 will meet my needs better, so I up graded[twice the money and a couple extra features..like 4 gig ram capacity, larger HD etc]

This is after I loaded all my software in the Compaq/3100+....and now I am installing the software in my HP/Pentium4...

Fran....sounds like a sizzler for sure Good Luck with it and keep us posted!!