Live 6.0 and new Intel Core 2 Quad processors

love_tempo · Post by **love_tempo** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 9:14 am

I am wondering after Intel has just introduced these new quad core CPUs how Ableton is fixed to perform on them.

It seems like many applications tested in benchmarks failed to make use of the extra cores. I wonder can Ableton benefit, as is. You would think that heavy plugs like convolution reverbs, vocoders and things like reaktor could benefit from living on seperate cores but it depends on the design.

Reason I ask, is that I am due a christmas bonus which will go toward a new DAW and I am trying to decide whether to go for a quad or dual core now. Intel has cheaper quad cores coming out in january so if Ableton is good to go on more than two cores, then I will wait until then.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 10:08 am

I doubt they'll really impliment quad cores for ableton until live 7 sometime next year, though it does say "multi core" in the preferences which implies possibly more than 2 but it just depends on how they've implimented it as to whether it'll use them effectly and I'm kinda assuming at this point that it will really only use 2 with real results and IF it uses more it'll probably be slightly less exciting of results for the additional 2 as it probably isn't optomized for quads. though this is speculation on my part.

love_tempo · Post by **love_tempo** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 10:17 am

You might be right, I was thinking the same thing. It depends on the implementation so only the developers can answer this question.

I suppose you can always run reaktor etc... externally but it's not the same.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 10:33 am

if ableton fully supports quad cores i suppose it'll be time to put my powerbook to rest eh? I'm slobbering over the power of dual cores but holding myself back, but the power of quad cores? oh god....

you could probably drop 10 copies of ever plugin in your library and still have power to spare.

robin · Post by **robin** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:12 am

I'd be surprised if Live 6 doesn't support more than two cores. I don't think the multiprocessor support is particularly fine grained but I'm sure it's not limited to two.

ze2be · Post by **ze2be** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:48 am

robin wrote:I'd be surprised if Live 6 doesn't support more than two cores. I don't think the multiprocessor support is particularly fine grained but I'm sure it's not limited to two.

Juging by the cpu tests here, it do work. But maybe not as expected/hoped.

Go back a few pages on the end and have a look at quads:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 945#382945

forgie · Post by **forgie** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:59 am

I was under the impression that each track is run as a seperate thread in L6, so the more cores the better. Live may get the thread/processor allocation wrong, and one core might be overused, but quad should still see a noticeable boost. I could be wrong, but that was what I gathered from reading all the L6 literature and forums over the past few months.

I'm hoping to get a Mac Pro in the coming months, so I'm really hoping that more cores scale well!

muscleandhate · Post by **muscleandhate** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:08 pm

Johnisfaster wrote:if ableton fully supports quad cores i suppose it'll be time to put my powerbook to rest eh? I'm slobbering over the power of dual cores but holding myself back, but the power of quad cores? oh god....

you could probably drop 10 copies of ever plugin in your library and still have power to spare.

I thought this about Duelcore technology, coming from a three year old Dell Inspiron but somehow I think software manufacturers somehow make their software require twice as much processing power. I suppose this is so we constantly feel the need to upgrade. Awesome music was produced on an Amiga!

love_tempo · Post by **love_tempo** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 4:02 pm

ze2be wrote:
robin wrote:I'd be surprised if Live 6 doesn't support more than two cores. I don't think the multiprocessor support is particularly fine grained but I'm sure it's not limited to two.

Juging by the cpu tests here, it do work. But maybe not as expected/hoped.

Go back a few pages on the end and have a look at quads:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 945#382945

interesting, but it looks like these types of machines might need a heavier test to push them hard enough to see real differences esp. now that 8 core machines are possible.