Build around nVidia 280 card

Had another motherboard fail (old shuttles are finally crapping out on me)

Want to build a machine around the new Nvidia 280 1G card.
Budget is $1500 which only leaves me with $1100 after the card purchase.

Seems XP Pro is still the recommended OS.
What about RAM speed, is 800 low latency still fine (4G)?
Figured on getting a fast duel core instead of quad core cpu.

Please chime in especially if your already running the latest gpu.
I’ve mentioned getting a laptop for over a year, but glad I waited cuz I really need another workstation now and will be happy to list my specs once I purchase.

Thanks,
~Shawn (head spinning on new egg)

The 200 series runs Touch great. Im using a 260 right now and it’s amazingly fast.

I’ve never really did any performance tests as to memory latency speeds and its effect on Touch so I can’t say much about that.

The more I dig deeper into this build the more I’m pulling back.
It just doesn’t make financial sense to buy the fastest anything.

So I’m looking at the 9600Gt SSC 1G gpu.
Maybe I should sacrifice gpu memory for clock speed and go with 8800GTS 512MB?
Is there a real difference between 650MHz and 750MHz clock speeds?

Thinking of running a Duel Core instead of a Quad.
Won’t Touch run faster with a higher speed Duel instead of a lower Quad?

Also, any recommendations for a motherboard?

Thanks,
~Shawn

It’s entirely dependent on what the particular synth that is currently running. A synth that has a lot of SOPs that are cooking every frame may benefit from from a Quad core over a Dual core. Or similarly a synth that has a lot of Movie In TOPs cooking every frame will benefit from a quad core. Both of these will benefit from Quad core because a lot of the work for those operations is multithreaded (moved to other CPUs).

But at the same time having a faster Dual core will make your main thread run faster.

But be warned that clock speeds are meaningless unless you are comparing two of same model CPUs.

Comparing clock speeds of two different model video cards is just as meaningless.

A newer chip (both GPUs and CPUs) may be able to do more work per clock, so a lower clock speed doesn’t necessarily mean it’s slower.

So the answer is: it’s impossible to answer.
Do you need more memory? depends on your synth. Do you need faster GPU speed? Depends on your synth.

Thanks Malcolm,

CPU:
For the same price ($190):
Duel Core 3.16GHz [1333MHz FSB] L2 cache: 6MB
Quad Core 2.4GHz [1066MHz FSB] L1 cache: 128+128, L2 cache: 2x4MB

I also take a look at the price leap (where price jumps dramatically for faster speeds):

Duel Core 3.33GHz [1333MHz FSB] L2 cache: 6MB $270 (fastest duel core available)
Quad Core 2.83GHz [1333MHz FSB] L2 cache: 12MB $325 (next cpu upgrade price is over $520)

GPU:
The newer GTX200 series had according to (tinyurl.com/49vnz4) has made significant optimizations.
The only issue I found was a slight decrease in vertex shading over the 9800 series, but a 20% increase in pixel shading.
With the driver updates, this should change.
They recommend the GTX 260 ($250)since it’s almost half the price of it’s bigger brother(GTX 280 $420.
I think I can deal with that even though it has less RAM. I’m saving a ton, and getting into the next gen.

This is a reply from my longtime friend about my new cpu purchase, wonding what you guys think as this will sway me from Duel to Quad or visa versa.