Heres Illas spin on it
First of all...Im an AMD person so im biased right from the start...money versus function blah blah blah...
ok remember the guys post about how he uses ..well heres the quote
"In my case I have a P4 2.8 running at 3.5GHz and 1GB ram. I record in 24bit/88.2Khz. My current project has 30 tracks, and uses 27 plugins of varying resource utilisation. It's totally maxed out on this load
- the cpu is running between 85% & 95%,"
Ok he's using a single Pentium Processor...but he neglected to mention if he's using hyperthreading...
anyways...
I have projects right up there with 30 tracks and more like 40 or 50 fx plugins total, including inserts, send fx, and mastering buss fx, with bussed fx etc ..and vstis etc.. this is done at 32 bit/44.1 khz...i usually get around 40 to 50 percent cpu usage in Cubase VST with this kind of load...if Sonar is truly better optimized than Cubase...then the load should be lower in Sonar ...but either way my system is far from crippled...However since the other guy records at 88.1 khz...that explains his high cpu usage...me im not really big on higher sampling rates...IE i dont record higher than 44.1 khz...since i use 32 bit depth im quite pleased with my results...
but moving along..
The real benefit at this point of having dual processors would be the other things you can do with your computer under heavy loads...like use the web burn cds etc...
Now bear in mind i can do this while im using cubase at the moment with my Yummy AMD chip...however....the big boost in dual comes from In my opinion the mixdown phase!
Imagine having two cpus...with one being used just for dsp or the duty spread evenly between them however you scheme it out...but now because you only are using 25% or so of your cpu power you get like a 30 to 45 second wait time for a mixdown to two track on a 5 minute song? With those same 30 tracks and 50 plus plug ins and instruments? Thats what sold it for me with dual..
However.....its a momentary truth that AMD has better technology in and out for DAWS....If it be because of the floating point math..the future promise of 64 bit prowess or just the damn endorsements I mean come on Skywalker Ranch is outfitted with a 140 count em 140 AMD Opteron server room/ render farm, along with 60 dual processor workstations that are powered by Opterons as well.
and I mean George Lucas of ILM/Star Wars fame's Skywalker Ranch...yeah big boys with big toys...but with AMD you have your hands on similar if not the same technology... You could build a dual Opteron System for use with Sonar and it would be most beastly thing out...Go to the sonar forum at cakewalks site...they have done a test called the Sonar Test....Dual Opterons whip the living daylights out of anything smoking right now...at least when it comes to Sonar...
Me Im still very functional with just one cpu....
BTW my specs are AMD XP 2700 333 (2.17 ghz)...2 x 512 MB Sticks of DDR333 ram.., 1 Seagate 80 GB Barracuda 7200 rpm hdrive and 1 160 GB Western Digital Cavia 7200 rpm hdrive..This is all hooked up to a Shuttle AN35N Ultra 400 Motherboard......I love my system...but the other thing we should be really asking is about the render farm idea...
FX teleport is what i really want to get involved in....Dual processors are a reality right now...but even as we speak they are building dual core processors at AMD and at Intel...cramming theoretically twice the power onto one chip!
However...a render farm allows you to harness the power of more than one computer to help you run your DAW...imagine 5 x 2 ghz computers on a network and you get all of their cpu power at your disposal? To me its FAR superior to a multi processor set up because multiprocessors in windows require scheduling and assignments of threads that may limit your bandwidth or how much cpu you can use for dsp depending on your host...whereas FX Teleport allows you just to keep calling up plugins from each computer and you can max each one out...so realistically you could have virtually no fx or instruments running off your main computer and have the slaves doing all the hardwork....realistically...this means your mixdowns should be lightning fast since the master computer that does the rendering has no load on its processor...since all dsp is done on the slaved workstations..I mean hey even 3 computers in that sort of set up just sounds so juicy...and we're not talking alot of money... i mean could you imagine taking your main system like a basic 1.8 or 2 ghz computer which has a good soundcard etc
and using 2 additional computers outfitted with say oh xp 2000 or 2100s which are like 55 dollars a chip or 60 bucks a chip for 1.67 or 1.8 ghz i think...you could slap em on a pc chips mobo for like 40 dollars a piece with onboard video and everything else that you need...add another 40 bucks for ddr ram... maybe the full cost of a barebones fitted with only the essentials runs you around 200 dollars a pop...you dont need large amounts of hard drive space unless you use large sample libraries....but with the render farm your actual cpu power is literally the sum of the cpus bandwidth..so it wont be like oh sometimes dual processors work and sometimes they dont dependin g on the software...NO
If you had this system at your grasp you're talking 2 ghz, plus 2 x 1.67..so 5.34 ghz of power to play with for your DAW....
Also the other reality with
the FX Teleport is that you can use MACS as slaves to a pc or PCS as a slave to a MAC...the cross platform we've always wanted has become a reality for Digital audio
Now to me a 5.34 ghz system sounds so much better than just a dual 2ghz system...thats the one thing left out of this whole discussion...this whoops the pants off any single amd or pentium chip out...
Something to consider
Sorry for the rant..but George Lucas is such a spoiled b*tch, such a gearslut he is
Peace
Illa
