So - would a via C3 be up to it??????

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munceyboyjoe
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So - would a via C3 be up to it??????

Post by munceyboyjoe » Sun Jan 19, 2003 6:57 pm

I really like the Idea of running a nice cool, quiet machine, and the Via C3's have go my attention. I know they're not up to much in the way of gaming, but that doesnt nessacarily scare me off...I was considering setting up a computer for music recording, and was wondering if anyone knew whether the 1 ghz C3 would be up to it?? Also, if anyone has used a C3, I would really appreciate some advice or tips, or if they were just plain rubbish.

NateR
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Post by NateR » Sun Jan 19, 2003 7:25 pm

My experience with a Via C3 800 is that it "feels" like it compares to a PII running at about half that speed. Benchmarks Ive seen show this gut reaction to be not to far from the truth in terms of benchmarks. My opinion is use the c3 when you dont need performance, i.e. web browsing, email, listening to mp3s, maybe even divx or dvds. Gaming, music/video editing, and other cpu hungry applications are better tackled by a current amd or intel cpu. Im not saying that it cant be done with a c3, but you can get a satisfactory noise level out of any cpu with the right cooling mechanism, and you will probably even prefer noise over sitting there wating 5 minutes to render a picture or mix down some tracks with a C3.

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Post by Justin_R » Mon Jan 20, 2003 12:35 pm

I have an 866Mhz C3 that has spent time in three different systems-- a full tower home file server, a minitower web/office/media viewing PC, and a similarly used unit in a Book PC case. The best match I found for my C3 was in the BookPC, where there's not really enough space to cool a significantly faster CPU. While the speed of these systems felt sufficient for most tasks, the few times I ran things that were CPU intensive on it made me want to pull my hair out.

If you're not putting your PC in a tiny case, there's no reason to get a C3, especially since you an get an easy-to-cool Celeron Tualatin for about the same cost. With the right motherboard and the right case, you could even build a one fan system.

Gandalf
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Post by Gandalf » Mon Jan 20, 2003 12:37 pm

I don't know much about music editing but I'm guessing that a high end (and expencive :P) soundcard would do most of the work and not your CPU. Correct me if I'm wrong though!

munceyboyjoe
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Post by munceyboyjoe » Mon Jan 20, 2003 1:38 pm

:oops: , I dont really know much about computery things, ah well.

tm
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Re: So - would a via C3 be up to it??????

Post by tm » Mon Jan 20, 2003 2:06 pm

munceyboyjoe wrote:I was considering setting up a computer for music recording, and was wondering if anyone knew whether the 1 ghz C3 would be up to it??
What type of software are you thinking of running? I don't know anything about music software, but you probably should look in that direction and have that guide what your processor needs are. Ask musicians who are doing a lot of work on their computers and see what they're using (both hardware and software) and what they feel the bottlenecks are. I know Ars Technica has a forum devoted to A/V stuff, and they'd probably be able to help you more on that side of things. You can then come back here for quieting the machine down :) I'm guessing if you're intending to do any editing, you probably need a more powerful CPU. You obviously won't need the super-powerful video card we gamers lust for, and you can probably get by with a nice (and cheap) Matrox video card. Also, how much are you willing to spend? Sky's the limit, you know :wink: [/url]

munceyboyjoe
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Post by munceyboyjoe » Mon Jan 20, 2003 2:41 pm

Hmm, what other reasonably cost-effective routes to quiet-ish, cool-ish systems do I have?? Cpu wise at least...

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Post by MikeC » Mon Jan 20, 2003 4:28 pm

You need some real crunching power for audio / recording work. It is possible to make very quiet machines all the way past 2.5G. Just study this site! Or buy a Stealth system from ARM Systems (if you are in the US).

Tore
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Moving or processing bytes?

Post by Tore » Tue Jan 21, 2003 11:33 pm

Hi!
I use a PII 300MHz PC with 320 MB RAM for video editing, and it works nice. According to NateR, that would be something like a C3 600MHz. I have a firewire card to transfer the video from my miniDV-camera at 720*576 pixels to my 5400 RPM harddrive. I don't loose a frame. Cutting the video clips and put them together, inserting transitions and putting in a sound track is done without delays. When I render the video to a mpg or avi-file though, it's time to do something else.

My point is that a lot of media editing consist of moving bytes rather than processing them, or maybe just inserting some bookmarks which tells the program where to jump in the media when playing it.

Image processing is much tougher on the processor than many kinds of sound work. I would think that EPIA ME6000 would be powerfull enough to record, cut and paste sound, but if you want to do a lot of processing on wave-data a more powerfull processor might be nice. Processing is stuff like changing the pitch, resampling to a different KHz, echo effects, normalizing the sound, and not to forget compressing MP3-files. However, if you plan your work properly and the program supports batch processing, you can test what you want to do on a small piece of music, set up the job and go for a walk :wink:

If you need the computer in the same room as you record, I think an EPIA ME 6000, a Morex 55W PSU (www.mini-itx.com), and a Seagate Barracuda V harddrive in a Smart Drive (http://www.siliconacoustics.com/driven.html) would be nice. It would produce almost no sound (pun intended). Of course you would also need a good microphone, maybe a mixing table, and to put something on the walls to make it a nice recording room.

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Post by powergyoza » Tue Jan 21, 2003 11:39 pm

MikeC wrote:You need some real crunching power for audio / recording work. It is possible to make very quiet machines all the way past 2.5G. Just study this site! Or buy a Stealth system from ARM Systems (if you are in the US).
<shameless_plug>all the way past 2.5GHz or even 2 x 1.4GHz in SMP config (and easily more!)</shameless_plug>

MikeC
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Post by MikeC » Wed Jan 22, 2003 12:04 am

Thanks for the insights into audio, Tore. Not having done it myself I was not aware of those details. Maybe the new Neremiah core VIA C3 will work fine for lots of audio work. It's in both C3 and EPIA.

munceyboyjoe
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Post by munceyboyjoe » Wed Jan 22, 2003 3:39 am

Yeah I notice via have just announced the cpu running full fpu speed, maybe it will help them along a bit, If they ever reach the uk that is.

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Post by Destron » Wed Jan 22, 2003 10:14 am

munceyboyjoe, please tell us what you mean by music recording. Do you mean:

1. Multitrack recording your band with an 8 track interface
2. Multitrack recording your band one stereo pair at a time with a 2 track interface
3. Multitrack recording yourself with a 2 track interface
4. Programming MIDI w/external synths
5. Programming MIDI w/soft synths
6. All the above

If your goal is 4, I would say go for a C3. If your goal is 2 or 3, I would say you could go for a C3 but I wouldn't (reason at the bottom). If your goal is 1, 5 or 6, I would say to forget the C3, it can't properly handle the load, or if it can you have no headroom and no room for future expansion.

The reason I wouldn't recommend getting a C3 is because a system, especially one designed around handling media, is full of other noisy things like HDD's, PS's, and a CD-R. If you get a more powerful chip and put it in a big case (audio recording is not space or looks intensive, unlike an HTPC) with a quiet fan properly set up, it will be almost as quiet as the C3. If you build a computer where the only noisemaker is the CPU fan then the C3 will be noticably quieter. Don't shortchange your audio PC's future by buying the weakest possible processor to get the job done (at the same time, don't shortchange your future by building a PC that is too noisy to record audio in the same room. It's a delicate balance.)

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Post by Likif » Wed Jan 22, 2003 2:13 pm

hum. I'm using Steinberg's Halion softsampler in Cubase on my 1700+, works great, apparently no great load on my CPU. Can't get it to work on my k6-2 500 at all, just not enough juice. I'm also very happy I can run VST plugins, big ones too (like those Renaissance ones from Waves), without slowing my system down too much. My sound card only has influence on the 'latency' of my system. You could get yourself a sound card with inbuilt effects processor and mixer, only they are bloody expensive, but that would take off the load from your CPU.

Destron's right, if you only do midi, and then routing the signals to an external mixer with an external effects box, you could get by with an old Atari. But anything involving plugins, softsynths or processing in general needs a hefty CPU.

Harddiskrecording doesn't seem to generate much of a load on the CPU. But get yourself a quiet 7200 rpm harddisk, then. 16 tracks at once can make a harddisk very noisy...professional studios use SCSI 10000 rpm drives, or even 15000 rpm, and I'm guessing they make tons of noise.

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