question on switching computers

jimistone

jimistone

long standing member
In my studio I have an older dell that is running windows XP
It only has 2 gb of RAM and a threaded processor. I haven't had any problems until my current project. The audio drops out for a second and when I am recording a track I'm getting latency. I haven't checked the buffer setting.

Question:
I have another computer with a AMD athelon duel core processor and 3 gb of RAM. Would that be more powerful enough to justify swapping out computers?

The only reason I didn't use it to start with us because it has the Alta Vista OS and may have a virus. I guess I could install XP in it.

I guess I'm just wondering if I'll get enough performance boost to be worth doing that.
 
Are we talking desktops here? I shall assume so.
Yes, the dual core and 3G ram should be a lot better all thing being equal (rarely are!).

If you are going to put XP on the AMD when the installation asks "do you wish to format "C" say yes because this will remove any trace of a virus. Do you have the machines networked? If not do so via copper and an RJ45 patch lead and as you have old XP PCs you might need a "crossover" cable.

Running Network Wizard in XP is pretty easy and then just ignore the dire warning against sharing system drives and do it so that you can just move music files across machines.

However! You would do FAR better IMHO to test the AMD machine to see if it can run W7 64 bits. Not only is W7 a lot better protected than XP (which of course is not at all now) but if you CAN go to a 64bit OS you can uprate the memory. 4G is good, 6 to 8 is even better!

The Dell can then be relegated to "office" duties. You can in fact keep it on the net if you are careful, i.e. only go to trusted sites like HR. I have an XP desktop (runs a printer) and I go online several times a week with it. I use Avast free. PITA compared to Msoft SE but what can yer do?!!

Dave.

Dave.
 
jimistone said:
In my studio I have an older dell that is running windows XP
It only has 2 gb of RAM and a threaded processor. I haven't had any problems until my current project. The audio drops out for a second and when I am recording a track I'm getting latency. I haven't checked the buffer setting.

Question:
I have another computer with a AMD athelon duel core processor and 3 gb of RAM. Would that be more powerful enough to justify swapping out computers?
Click to expand...

Can you find out the cpu model number for each machine?
There's program called cpu-z (or cpuinfo) which can tell you.

Chances are the and is faster, though.

Do take a look at the buffer settings. If it turns out you've been sitting at 32 or 64 there's room to move there.
 
Thsnks, I should mention that I'm also buying a laptop next week. I'm going with the hp elite book with 8 gb RAM, 7i processor, 250 gb hard drive and windows 7 pro. I still want a desktop computer that stays in the studio.
Thanks guys
 
I have a 4 or 5 year old HP Pavillion laptop with 8GB Ram and AMD Vision (whatever that is).
I think it is dual core - I see 4 bars on my CPU meter in Sonar X3.
I runs out of juice after 30 tracks and 10 -15 plugins. My buddy's 8 cpu breezes through.
I am going to upgrade to a Quad core eventually. For now I just keep my tracks/plugins under control.
If I were you I would record on the new laptop instead.
 
jimistone said:
Thsnks, I should mention that I'm also buying a laptop next week. I'm going with the hp elite book with 8 gb RAM, 7i processor, 250 gb hard drive and windows 7 pro. I still want a desktop computer that stays in the studio.
Thanks guys
Click to expand...

Unless you have a specific need for better, W7/64 Home Premium is more than good enough for music work. If you can save a bob or two there and go for an SSDrive that would serve you better I think.
And again, if there is a choice, make sure the laptop has USB 3.0. I have a U3.0 hard drive and it is blindin'!

I type this on an HP i3 laptop which has run around 20 tracks of Cubase no sweat at all.

Dave.
 
Instead of switching, you can also make use of both machines....

I still use Win XP 32 bit, but I have & use up to 3 DAW machines synced together for more resources as needed...each machine has an intel quad core, and 4 GB installed ram... that's combined resources of up to 12 CPU cores & 12 GB installed ram.
The 1st DAW is a dedicated VSTi machine where I also record all my midi into, the 2nd is a dedicated audio recording machine, the 3rd (more recently added) is just for extra resources, but so far just two machines have really been enough.
Most of the time I work with one machine at a time, 1st starting off by recording midi with VSTi's... and only sync together for a brief period of time as needed...say to send a temporary stereo sub-mix from my VSTi machine to my audio machine, then I can work on all my audio tracks with just one machine on again. Once audio tracks are finnished, they get synced again for a more appropriate combined mix..that is resending a better stereo sub-mix from the VSTi machine to the audio machine.
 
ido1957 said:
If I were you I would record on the new laptop instead.
Click to expand...

Without specific cpu info it's hard to compare things, but the new laptop is almost certainly going to blow the older desktops out of the water.
It's surprising what you can do on an older machine, but I'd probably stick to the laptop myself.

People talk about laptops not being powerful enough compared to desktops etc.. It's not as simple as that.
Before I got a desktop (more for convenience than anything) my i5 4gb laptop was doing just fine for fairly heavy projects.

I do run with SSD hard drives in every computer now, though. They make such a massive difference.
 
If I could hazard an off the wall suggestion:
Why not just upgrade the 2GB of memory to 4GB or even 8GB?
If your machine is working well, and you are running into memory problems, this should solve the problem.
And yes, SSDs are pretty good if properly utilized. I use one for my folders (where Reason stores all the sounds and records all the audio) and one for my sounds (where Reason looks for WAV/MP3/Soundfont/Refills.
 
BroKen_H said:
If I could hazard an off the wall suggestion:
Why not just upgrade the 2GB of memory to 4GB or even 8GB?
If your machine is working well, and you are running into memory problems, this should solve the problem.
And yes, SSDs are pretty good if properly utilized. I use one for my folders (where Reason stores all the sounds and records all the audio) and one for my sounds (where Reason looks for WAV/MP3/Soundfont/Refills.
Click to expand...

The 2G machine is XP Ken and it is very unlikely to be XP64 (be pretty bloody useless if it was anyway!) So the most ram it could utilize is a smell over 3G and since you would almost certainly have to fit 4G, hardly worth it?

Dave.
 
I bought a laptop today. I went with a hp 8560 p.

processor: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen. 2.60 GHz
RAM: 8gb
Hard drive: 250 gb
Windows 7 enterprise (has xp mode) 64 bit.
2 USB 3.0 ports
1 USB 2.0 port
1 VGA port
1 Firewire port
1 serial port
A few other ports too.

It's refurbished and from a top seller on ebay with 100% positive feedback.
$299.00 and free shipping.
I've been looking at computers so much over the weekend that I'm seeing stars.
I investigated laptops enough to know that I got a good deal on this machine. I'm happy.

It amazes me what 300 bucks will get you in terms of a refurbished computer now days.
 
jimistone said:
I bought a laptop today. I went with a hp 8560 p.

processor: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen. 2.60 GHz
RAM: 8gb
Hard drive: 250 gb
Windows 7 enterprise (has xp mode) 64 bit.
2 USB 3.0 ports
1 USB 2.0 port
1 VGA port
1 Firewire port
1 serial port
A few other ports too.

It's refurbished and from a top seller on ebay with 100% positive feedback.
$299.00 and free shipping.
I've been looking at computers so much over the weekend that I'm seeing stars.
I investigated laptops enough to know that I got a good deal on this machine. I'm happy.

It amazes me what 300 bucks will get you in terms of a refurbished computer now days.
Click to expand...

Wow! Firewire ports are like hen's teeth, especially on lappies. Does it perchance have an Express card slot? That would really put a cherry on top!

I doubt I could find anything like that in UK anywhere close to that equive money.
Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Wow! Firewire ports are like hen's teeth, especially on lappies. Does it perchance have an Express card slot? That would really put a cherry on top!

I doubt I could find anything like that in UK anywhere close to that equive money.
Dave.
Click to expand...
Yes, it had the express card slot. That's one of the reasons I went with this laptop...the amazing selection of ports it has
 
ecc83 said:
The 2G machine is XP Ken and it is very unlikely to be XP64 (be pretty bloody useless if it was anyway!) So the most ram it could utilize is a smell over 3G and since you would almost certainly have to fit 4G, hardly worth it?

Dave.
Click to expand...
I have 8G in 3 XP machines. I use a utility called RAMDisk to treat the part that XP can't access like a tiny hard drive, which is where I put my page files. It does improve performance a bit.

The truth is that RAM is only a huge deal if you're running a lot of sample-heavy VSTis or maybe a shit ton of really long delay plugs or I guess something like a different cathedral IR on every track.

The real bottleneck most of the time is going to be CPU and then disc speed. SSD made a big difference in my track counts. Somewhere I read about a test somebody did that claimed four cores was about optimal for a DAW. More than that didn't seem to improve performance much. Don't remember where that was...
 
That's clever Ash'! Is the app a freebie?
I agree about ram. My son ran an HP dual core desktop with 2G for a couple of years and built multiple tracks in Cubase and Samplitude and never had a problem until he dabbled with Camtasia a video program...THEN he ran out of memory!

Dave.
 
ashcat_lt said:
The real bottleneck most of the time is going to be CPU and then disc speed. SSD made a big difference in my track counts. Somewhere I read about a test somebody did that claimed four cores was about optimal for a DAW. More than that didn't seem to improve performance much. Don't remember where that was...
Click to expand...

This is important.
Everyone should have some kind of system monitor to see what's really happening.
I saved a guy a load of money on ram and SSDs the other day by pointing out that his cpu was flat out at 100%. He's a big photoshopper.

He had it in his head that more ram would help regardless...

ecc83 said:
I agree about ram. My son ran an HP dual core desktop with 2G for a couple of years and built multiple tracks in Cubase and Samplitude and never had a problem until he dabbled with Camtasia a video program...THEN he ran out of memory!
Click to expand...

My machine sits at 3-5gb usage all day long with audio duties, but as soon as I get into a bit of video it can saturate my 12gb.
Video's a killer!
 
ecc83 said:
That's clever Ash'! Is the app a freebie?
I agree about ram. My son ran an HP dual core desktop with 2G for a couple of years and built multiple tracks in Cubase and Samplitude and never had a problem until he dabbled with Camtasia a video program...THEN he ran out of memory!

Dave.
Click to expand...
There are several free options out there. I honestly can't remember which one I'm running.

Edit - But that stupid little dog found it for me. VSuite Ramdisk
 
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ashcat_lt said:
I have 8G in 3 XP machines. I use a utility called RAMDisk to treat the part that XP can't access like a tiny hard drive, which is where I put my page files. It does improve performance a bit.

The truth is that RAM is only a huge deal if you're running a lot of sample-heavy VSTis or maybe a shit ton of really long delay plugs or I guess something like a different cathedral IR on every track.

The real bottleneck most of the time is going to be CPU and then disc speed. SSD made a big difference in my track counts. Somewhere I read about a test somebody did that claimed four cores was about optimal for a DAW. More than that didn't seem to improve performance much.

https://homerecording.com/bbs/redir...ftware.com/en-us/vsuite-ramdisk/download.html
Click to expand...

Interesting, but I could have sworn reading that using RAMDisk in general wasn't really a solution to the ram limitation. A couple/few years ago I spent quite a bit of time trying to find out what RAMDisk was all about, and how it could help me with Win XP as a way of breaking the ram limit barrier. I came to a point where I was convince that it was of no real benefit. I'm vague on what that actually was, but it's somewhere along the clouded lines about that reaching a point where a Page File would come in would be a very bad thing in the 1st place, at which point things go south from there, for different reasons...one I think being that some amount swapping was taking place.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're using RAMDisk for? I was assuming that you literally meant as a way to add more ram the the 4GB limit...or the 3.25GB accessible limit.

After all my research on RAMDisk, and my disappointment crushing my XP ram uppage dreams, I then moved onto using a 2nd XP dedicated machine to run all my VSTi's from, and used them as a Master/Slave set-up. That was by far the greatest improvement I've ever made since entering computer recording. Both my VSTi & Audio machines being Win XP, with Intel Quad cores & 4GB installed ram, which share the loads of my song projects, they are each now being underloaded by a fairy good margin. It's amazing how much I can actually run by splitting up the loads.
 
No, I'm not really trying to get more RAM with the RAMDisk, just trying to do something constructive with it. It may be the case that using the page file is just plain suck anyway, but it must better going from RAM to RAM than going from RAM to a spinning disk, right? I guess I can't prove that this improves anything at all, but RAM is so cheap nowadays, and it certainly isn't hurting anything.
 
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