Configuration help for newbie....

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kunal_thematrix

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Hi. Im planning to buy a laptop for the convenience of recording mainly rock stuff on the go, so i need to run stuff like amplitube or maybe guitar rig etc, and drums sequencers to a DAW and i'd like it if this kind of setup runs smoothly. im a little confused b/w two configs....

1. Core 2 Duo T6400(2Ghz/800 FSB/2mb cache) Cantiga GM45
2. Core 2 Duo P8600(2.4Ghz/ 1066 FSB/3mb cache) Cantiga PM45

They've both got integrated stereo sound but not a sound card per se. The rest is almost the same with them having one 1394a port,3 gb ram and 320 gb 5400rpm. But i'll have to shell out $125 extra for the second config. I wanted to know if its entirely necessary to go in for the higher config and also if a config slightly lower than even the 1st one would do coz i'm running a little tight on the budget. Thanx!!
 
I was running off a Dell laptop - T7300 2.0GHz core 2 duo for a while, I tracked 8 tracks at a time, mixed down 14-16 tracks with an avg of 1 plugin per track or so, no problems. I don't know how close I was getting to overloading the CPU, but that's where the 1st bottleneck is gonna be. VSTi's and plugins eat up the cpu fast, so IME CPU should be the primary concern, DON'T skimp on the cpu! My old P4 desktop couldn't keep up with ezdrummer and the rest of my tracks - I had to program drums, render the drum tracks, import the wav's, and get the vsti out of the project... Pain in the ass, ver limiting and time consuming.. Not a prob with my laptop or my new AMD daw. Any modern memory and hard drives are sufficient for your typical home recording scenario.

So a 2.0GHz will prolly work, but for $125 I'd take the better cpu.
 
hey thanx a lot for the help. I had the same problem with my old p4 too. I had to create wav files and avoid too much real time processing. I guess the 2.0 Ghz will get the job done. I'll consider the higher CPU config if it fits into my budget. Anything else that you think i'll need in the laptop? Any kind of help is appreciated...thanx again...
 
Na not really.. Like I said, CPU will prolly be the first bottleneck, and you prolly won't hit the limitations of the rest of the hardware.
 
I think ezdrummer is memory intensive rather than CPU. I've got a P4 2.8ghz w/3gig of ram and have no problem running 10 - 12 tracks with two instances of ezdrummer going.

I noticed your drive speed was 5400rpm. If you can find a 7200 rpm drive, that will help, especially if you have several tracks going at once. Also having a separate physical hard drive is much better. A firewire drive would be fine.

Here are some links:

http://www.steinberg.net/en/support/steinberg_support_daw.html
(Even though this is geared towards Cubase, it has a lot of useful info.)

http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/ts/detail.php?Index=30058
 
will it make a difference if has a 256mb graphics card?.....will that adversely affect its power to process the audio?
 
No, that'll be fine.. Any video card is fine, Cubase and other daw software doesn't require any kind of fancy video. In fact a 4mb pci card would be enough. It won't hurt anything to have fast graphics, but it'll go largely unused.
 
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