How much PC speed/power do I need?

[Ringwraith]

Hey all.

What kind of PC power for recording is the norm these days? I'm considering a new system & have been totally out of the loop for the last few years in regards to power/speed. I've been using the same self built PC for the last 4/5 years & it's been very stable & great all around. It still does a great job but I'd like to start using things like BFD but they require a lot more power than what I have. Also are there certain mother boards that are popular/stable?

My current system is (please don't laugh)
PIII 1G
512 Ram
2X 40G IBM deskstars
ASUS MB (I forget which model)
M-Audio Delta 1010
I'm running Logic Audio Pro on a dual boot with Win 98se

Thanks
Sean

 

[travelin travis]

As fast as you can afford seems to be the norm. Just remember that as new technology emerges, the older stuff gets cheaper.

ASUS still makes good boards.

Check Fxpansions system recommendations for ram. I'm running with 768 mb fine here which is below the recommendation but I'm slick like that.

Keep noise in consideration if the pc will be in the same room that you track in. Go for a quiet power supply, cpu fan, and system fans. Read up a bit at silentpcreview. Lots of good info there.

 

[Ford Van]

2.4g min for the CPU. I have 2.8 and it is JUST barely getting by for a 20 track project with lots of plugins running. With the new duo core cpu's out there, it is like having better than 2 of mine, so really, that is about where you would want to be!

1gb of RAM. People recommend 2. Fine, if you are going to run a lot of software synth's, then go 2gb, but 1gb will serve you pretty well!

Don't get all hung up on super duper fast speedy hard drives! Just make sure you get something that has a 8mb buffer/cache and is 7200rpm and you will get track counts FAR BEYOND what you will EVER need!

ASUS indeed still makes a great mobo. Antec makes a great power supply, and make sure to overdo what you ever think you will need for a power supply. 420 watts or more will do! Antec also has a pretty good case in the Sonata. Check it out.

Video card, stick with the GeForce chip set's. ATI stuff always seems to create buggy systems in my experience. No need for anything high-tech on the video card! 64mb of memory is fine. Consider a dual head card so you can run two monitors! If you spend any more than $50 on a video card, you spent too much!!!

You will of course want a DVD/CD burner. Stick with the big names, and no need to get crazy with lightscribe and shit like that. Double density is great, but I would worry more about having 8x or even 16x speed. Again, stick with the reputable names: Plextor, Pioneer, Sony, etc...Stay away from off-brand/stuff you have never heard of.

You may STILL want to keep a silly ol' floppy disk drive. ASUS STILL uses floppy disks to update it's mobo.

There are a gazillion things to look for on a mobo, and a million-jillion options available. Gigabit ethernet, PCI-E, USB 2, Firewire, SATA, RAID controllers, on and on and on it goes. You may need some, but not others. It is actually quite difficult to find the right board that has the EXACT options you feel you will need for your system.

 

[altitude909]

• I recommend a core 2 duo E6600 and up (the 4 mb cache is what you want) on an intel 965 chipset ie: ASUS P5, Gigabyte DS3. Dont bother with SLI mainboards, you wont need the extra 16x slot and it will save you some money
• SATA everything: meaning hard drives, CDR/DVDR etc. The nicer seagates are quick, quite, and cheap.
• Nvidia 7*** GS PCI-E video card. These are lower end cards but they are generally passively cooled so they make no noise
• Good quality powersupply, should be 400+ watts and middle of the road price wise at least, do not skimp here
• lots of good ram (corsair, OCZ etc)

 

[Mindset]

Eh, he beat me to it. Get the Core2duo, I do suggest faster hard drives though, SATA ones are pretty quick compared to the old PATA's. For the Core 2 Duo (even though they run less power), get something like a 500w minimal power supply. On smaller ones, you'll notice system crashes, and hard drives that are not getting enough power to run optimal, your hard drive might end up spinning slower than 7200rpm. I do suggest 2GB also. Windows XP on a bare minimum uses a lot of RAM for all the b/s they have running. Cleaning it will help a small bit, but there's more resources than one can look at. For 1GB, windows will allocate around 368mb to 512mb just for itself. Then your software will take up maybe 256mb, and you'll bearly have anything left for anything you might need.

 

[whattaguy]

If you waited this long, wait until the second quarter. There is strong speculation that Intel's prices will drop and all of their Core2Duo chips will have the 4mb FSB. Just a thought.

Go with Seasonic for a very efficient and quiet PSU...they're pricey, but well worth it.

 

[Robert D]

I used to run 48 tracks on a P3 700 with no problems, so you'd think anything made today would be plenty. In reality, the faster they make the computer, the more the software companies will expect you to have that speed, and will write code accordingly. Most of that is good, some of it is just relaxing their optimization efforts. I think it's pretty safe to say though that the days of needing every MIP you can afford are past, and the sweet spot is usually somewhere south of the bleeding edge.

Ford - You must be running a crazy amount of plugs. I run a Powercore card for my verbs, so that takes a lot off, but still.......pegging your CPU meter on 20 tracks? I'm running a lowly Sempron 3100 and staying in the teens on most projects.

 

[Mindset]

If you waited this long, wait until the second quarter. There is strong speculation that Intel's prices will drop and all of their Core2Duo chips will have the 4mb FSB. Just a thought.

Go with Seasonic for a very efficient and quiet PSU...they're pricey, but well worth it.

Just a correction. 4 mb cache, 1066mhz fsb. Hey Ford, is that 2.8ghz a Pentium chip?? that could be the problem right there Those P4's weren't all that great compared to the AMD's of those days. They worked decent, and are stable but not reliable for audio as much. That's just my IMO. I like the new Intel models but not the Pentium D's and down.

I can easily run 48 tracks & throw in a few dozen plug-ins with no hicc-up in performance at all. It stays like around 5-10% cpu usage at a high load.

 

[whattaguy]

Just a correction. 4 mb cache, 1066mhz fsb. Hey Ford, is that 2.8ghz a Pentium chip?? that could be the problem right there Those P4's weren't all that great compared to the AMD's of those days. They worked decent, and are stable but not reliable for audio as much. That's just my IMO. I like the new Intel models but not the Pentium D's and down.

I can easily run 48 tracks & throw in a few dozen plug-ins with no hicc-up in performance at all. It stays like around 5-10% cpu usage at a high load.

Oops...thanks for that correction.

 

[Ford Van]

Ford - You must be running a crazy amount of plugs. I run a Powercore card for my verbs, so that takes a lot off, but still.......pegging your CPU meter on 20 tracks? I'm running a lowly Sempron 3100 and staying in the teens on most projects.

Well, put two RoomVerb2 verbs on your mix and see what happens! Otherwise, most tracks just running eq's and compressors. A gate here and there. Track automation for volume and effect sends. Etc....

I can get insane track counts. My ATA 100 drives will do over 130 24 bit/48khz tracks. But plugin's eat up cpu. ESPECIALLY two reverbs that are powerful like RoomVerb.

 

[Ford Van]

Just a correction. 4 mb cache, 1066mhz fsb. Hey Ford, is that 2.8ghz a Pentium chip?? that could be the problem right there Those P4's weren't all that great compared to the AMD's of those days. They worked decent, and are stable but not reliable for audio as much. That's just my IMO. I like the new Intel models but not the Pentium D's and down.

I can easily run 48 tracks & throw in a few dozen plug-ins with no hicc-up in performance at all. It stays like around 5-10% cpu usage at a high load.

AMD XP cpu here.

Again, if I took my reverbs off, I could run a crazy amount of plugin's. But, I am almost ALWAYS going to run two reverbs on a mix, and most people that mix worth a shit will too. Thus, you HAVE to consider the the load a good quality reverb will put on the system.

Also, I tend to not skimp and use low quality plugins, or stuff native to the software application. URS eq's and compressors, Waves, stuff like that. Not exactly low quality plugin's! So, 20 tracks with 2 high quality reverbs, say about 15 high quality eq's. 12 high quality compressors, a few limiters, a couple of delay lines. What is that? Around 30 high quality plugins that include 2 reverbs? See how your system holds up to that.

Again, I see NO advantage in going SATA on hard drives and cd/dvd drives. If your mobo is offering that, great, go for it. But again, you can get insane track counts with ATA 100 drives. Track counts that FAR EXCEED anything you will EVER need! A note about hard drives though. I would definitely stick with Seagates that have the 5 year warranty!!! I had one go down on me. Sent it back, got a new one! Had a stupid Maxtor go out on me once 1 freakin' month after the 1 year warranty. I will never buy anything but Seagate unless another company steps up with the same warranty!

 

[Mindset]

well that's the reason lol. I usually mix with sometimes more than 5 verbs, depending on style & genre. Usually at least 3. Also using Waves (at home). Usually at home, I don't mess with 40+ tracks so I don't see my cpu jump that high up, then again I run a 6700? 2.93ghz core 2 duo with that machine with no problems at all. I do however run PLENTY of plug-ins. I also am using RAID 0 with 4 150gb raptor drives. I use RAID 0 for performance of windows, opening whatever etc.

I particularly love seagate drives, maxtor ones suck, and used to not like WD either, but i took a risk & ran the raptors, and have no problems....yet....

btw I use 2 of those verbs at the same time too I have mixed projects at home that were around 30 tracks a couple times, and the processor handles pretty well. An ATA100 drive is perfectly fine for regular use & gives just as many tracks as another similar capacity drive. Except a seagate will live longer than a maxtor.

Ford, I think the problem arises with your CPU being so slow. OK, also, you said AMD XP processor running at 2.8ghz?? Did you over clock it, or are you talking about the xp 2800+ processor, cause those I belive run at 1.8 to 2.2ghz I can't remember supposedly outperforming the 2.8ghz pentium 4 back in those days.

That one time I ran 78 tracks (the highest I ran) with effects on all tracks, and that's more than just 1 effect each track of course, and mixing in 5.1 for film editing/post production, and surprisingly it handled it pretty well.

 

[altitude909]

Again, I see NO advantage in going SATA on hard drives and cd/dvd drives

I'll give you several:

a) PATA is dead, my mainboard does not natively support PATA drives and only has an ide port via onboard addon controller. Buying new pata drives would be pointless, most modern board only have one ide port anyway

b) No more jumpers!

c) No more big ribbon cables

d) sata allows for hot swap of hard drives (I use this on my machine all the time)

e) serial interface does not suffer from the parallel "one device slows down another" problem

I'll agree with you that SATA drives do not have huge benefits for a daw performance wise, but all the ancillary stuff makes it a no brainer. It was a happy, happy day when I got to throw out those short ass IDE cables and finally had presentable computer innards. It is also worth mentioning that I still use my IDE DVDR and CDR, but now they have IDE to sata converters on them ($12 ea at newegg)

 

[Ford Van]

a) PATA is dead, my mainboard does not natively support PATA drives and only has an ide port via onboard addon controller. Buying new pata drives would be pointless, most modern board only have one ide port anyway

b) No more jumpers!

c) No more big ribbon cables

d) sata allows for hot swap of hard drives (I use this on my machine all the time)

e) serial interface does not suffer from the parallel "one device slows down another" problem

I'll agree with you that SATA drives do not have huge benefits for a daw performance wise, but all the ancillary stuff makes it a no brainer. It was a happy, happy day when I got to throw out those short ass IDE cables and finally had presentable computer innards. It is also worth mentioning that I still use my IDE DVDR and CDR, but now they have IDE to sata converters on them ($12 ea at newegg)

Good point!

 

[Ringwraith]

Thanks guys!
Lots of great info here.
I'm not in a mad rush so I'll watch for price drops.
I was going to grab some more ram to help get me by but I guess my ASUS CUSL-2 is totally maxed out for ram & CPU. hehe Oh well, good excuse to upgrade! It would be nice to have a quieter box as well. This thing makes my ears ring! It doesn't affect tracking as I track in other rooms but still, it's really annoying sitting near it.

Cheers
Sean

 

[Mindset]

You think yours screams in your ear, mine is like a jet plane taking off with 4 10K rpm drives in there, not including the cooling fan on the cpu & gpu. Anyways, prices are expected to drop within' a month or 2. From what I heard AMD lost over half a billion dollars last quarter, and with Intel dropping prices, AMD will have to do something very fast to be able to make some money, which means price wars again.

 

[Mindset]

BTW, the SATA vs PATA issue, great points...
If a person is upgrading computers, and the prices of SATAII are at like $59 for 160gb WD, and they are about the same prices for PATA, why not just get a SATAII instead for the same money

 

[Ford Van]

I was going to grab some more ram to help get me by but I guess my ASUS CUSL-2 is totally maxed out for ram & CPU.

I seriously doubt that more RAM is going to offer much of a performance boost for your DAW software. Unless you are running out of ability to load VSTi and/or DXi instruments (software synth's) RAM will offer you almost no performance benefit in a DAW. Almost everything a DAW does it CPU and hard drive intensive.

 

[Ford Van]

Concerning the hard drive "debate".

Please read my original post CAREFULLY. I said "Don't get all hung up on super duper fast speedy hard drives! Just make sure you get something that has a 8mb buffer/cache and is 7200rpm and you will get track counts FAR BEYOND what you will EVER need!" This was meant more about not worrying about RAID, and which generation of SATA you get. The FACT is that a ATA 100 drive with an 8mb cache and is 7200 rpm will give you HUGE track counts. I posted that are a REFERENCE. Indeed I am aware that many newer mobo's have gone to SATA, and that SATA prices are comparable to ATA prices. None of that makes the spirit of my comment any less true, which is that you don't NEED the fastest drives available for HUGE tracks counts in a DAW.

Somebody mentioned something about how RAID 0 gives them increased OS performance. Blarg! Your "performance increase" over my lowly ATA drives is so minor that it isn't worth the extra expense. RAID arrays are great for servers, where serving possibly 100's upon 100's of very small files in a short amount of time is happening all the time. But for a DAW? Just not needed, and again, big deal if you shaved 2 seconds off of your boot time. Sure, I guess if you want to spend that extra money for your OS to boot up a few seconds faster, and applications will load 400ms faster, great. I just don't see it as a good bang for the buck upgrade when you COULD be using that money towards a faster CPU. I also don't think that a RAID 0 config is very safe for a DAW. You are now twice as likely to lose your same DATA!!!

 

[Mindset]

hmm true true. However I'm also running raid 1 with the 0 so it's being backed up regardless. My processor is a Core 2 Duo 6700 2.93ghz. The next step up is basically quad core, which I view as a waste of money at the time, so I spent the $200 or so on the raptor & ran raid. There wasn't anything else I could do to the system other than maybe put a water cooler into it The processor ran me around a grand. Which was the most stupidest thing I have ever done.... because for the same grand I could got a 6600 core 2 duo & over clock to 2.93ghz or faster, and saved $600 dollars for new monitors, or mic.

For performance boost from my old 7200rpm 8mb seagate to raid 0 with raptor 10k drives were actually a lot faster. Saving data became quick & painless, recalling data was the same way, I shaved about maybe around 7 minutes copying a DVD for instance. 7 minutes to me is worth it. 2 seconds, nope . If I only shaved 2 seconds off, I would take all 4 raptor drives, and un raid them and have 600gb storage.

Anyways, I wasn't pushing for people to install RAID systems into their computer. I was stating about the SATA vs PATA (and just stating that I myself, was running RAID 0 that's all), which your right, there's not that much of a performance increase unless - you go with a faster drive like the 10k or 15k rpm drives. Reason is, just for example.... the WD Raptor 10K drive seek time is 4ms right.... regular drives, 8-10ms seek time. That's half of the time it takes for a regular ata 100 drive to find data than it does for the 10K drive, then your looking at a small (but noticable) increase in speed from ata100 to sataI (again, I'm not talking about Ford's comment about ATA100 vs SATA or anything).