PC question

[groovedude]

Hello all,

I've got a bunch of questions relating to PC's, Mbox and audio in general.

First off

I've got an AMD 1.4, GHz machine 768 RAM, ASUS A7N8X board, XP pro (sp1),
Pro Tools LE, Reason, Absynth 3, Radium controller, Behringer 2031A montiors.

With the MBOX, the retailer asked me to find out what my chipset is. I thinkhe said SIS. What happens when Pro tools is run with and without an SIS chipset.

The speed of my processor is low, i have known this for a while, would it be a wise idea to over clock it? If so, is this something i can do myself without compromising or damaging my system?

The ASUS board is that supposed to be a good one? I had a friend tell me it was quite good.

Service pack 2.....should i install it? I have heard that it may not be configured for Pro Tools yet.

Using a system such as this has been great for me to put down ideas and work on arrangements. Hopefully someday if i ever start to make money from music i will be able to buy a desginated music system only and a recreational/business system....when i got my MBOX the guy at the store told me the beat way to go is two systems and i can usderstand what he was getting at.

Anyways thanks a bunch.
Cheers

[MrM]

If your machine is not on the internet I would stay away from SP2.
It has no benefits for audio.

Overclocking? Why, do you run into the limits of your CPU speed while doing audio?

[jmail]

You're fine for the time being with the CPU, no need to overclock. In fact, most interfaces do not like a "hyper" PCI bus from overclocking. It will cause trouble with sync, etc. Your Asus motherboard has the nVidia nForce chipset. As such there are issues with *some* PCI audio cards (the EMU 1820M, in particular). Some ProTools gear says in its requirements "Intel-based chipset" and you better believe them. Even still:

"Digidesign's Mbox is not compatible with the following chipsets:
Intel® 915G
Intel® 915P
Intel® 925X (925XE is compatible) "

Also from their site:

"if you encounter unexplained blue screens, freezes or spontaneous reboots when launching Pro Tools with Windows XP Service Pack 2, please update your PACE InterLok drivers:
Download Current InterLok Drivers
More information from the PACE website
The current InterLok drivers solve the described problems without having to disable Microsoft's DEP (Data Execution Prevention) feature introduced with Windows XP Service Pack 2."

BUT:

"AMD Athlon™ XP Processor (2000+)

VIA KT266A or NVIDIA nForce chipset
384 MB minimum of supported RAM*
512 MB or higher highly recommended "

So I mis-wrote, you don't have enough CPU, by a good bit. Check out:

http://www.digidesign.com/products/mbox/

and click around. Very illuminating.