Hello All, I am new to this forum and I am trying to get some opinions in regards to a question that I have... I am building a new computer primarily to be used as a digital audio workstation going with a MSI neo2 plat. nforce3 board due to soundcard/dspcard compatibility but im trying to figure out which cpu to get, my budget is 300-400$ for cpu so my choices basically come down to the amd64 3700+(san diego core/2.2ghz/1mb l2cache) or the amd64 3800+(venice core/2.4ghz/512kb l2cache)? I just read on toms hardware guide that they didnt see that much of a performance from varying l2 cache there was a much bigger jump in performance from increasing processor speed... the neo2 also has that core cell stuff which I believe you can do some oc'ing of the processor pretty easily which i am not completly against(however i have very little knowledge of)... basically there is a 17$ differance in the two chips on newegg and i want to make sure im getting the right thing for audio... thanks for anyhelp -c
In my experiences, L2 cache has been more important than sheer clock speed for audio engineering. However, either CPU will be more than enough to muscle just about any kind of audio engineering you're working on.
Yes go for the 3700+ but I would recommend strongly against MSI. Many motherboard manufacturers have software to very easily overclock but MSI is poorly designed, buggy, and has bad customer support. I would reccommend Abit or Asus.
The 3700+ will overclock higher than the 3800+ assuming you have proper cooling, though at stock it performs very similarly to a 3500+.
it appears as if some of the 2nd run of neo2plat boards that came out were horrible, however the ones that are out now seem to be performing very good, i already own an msi board and love it...
awesome... im going the zalman air cooling route, not truely intent on getting everything to overclock mainly just some reliable componants, not all top of the line... i just want to experiement with the possiblities...
