PC Advice

[HowardW]

Hello all,

The Pentium 3.0GHz machine I bought a few years ago is really struggling to handle Live 7, Reason and the ton of plugins I use. So I'm looking to upgrade.

Typically I use Live with Addictive Drums on one track, Reason rewired into another, and then anything up to 20 audio tracks with various processing plugs ins.

I'm looking at a Machine from a specialist retailer with the following spec.

Motherboard: Asus P5k VM
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz
Memory: DV RAM DDR2 2Gb
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 320GB
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Home

Does that sound capable of doing what I need?

I don't really know that much about stuff like CPUs/Memory etc - Will Live make the most of a Quad Core CPU? What does Quad Core even mean? (presumably 4 x 2.4GHz in this case?)

Any help very much appreciated.

H

[darkcatt]

[thefool]

Does that sound capable of doing what I need?

I don't really know that much about stuff like CPUs/Memory etc - Will Live make the most of a Quad Core CPU? What does Quad Core even mean? (presumably 4 x 2.4GHz in this case?)

Any help very much appreciated.

H

20 audio tracks: perhaps you should get a little more ram on top, since they are very cheap nowaday, though i don't think you will run into problems.

But yes the computer is great. I love my quadcore and live is IMHO pretty good at spreading the usage (also based on the performance tests done)
You can grap that processor without doubting.

BUT. What audio interface are you running with?

@darc: With what he's speaking off i don't think it nec. to blow a ton of money on the dual xenons, just my opinion

[Timur]

Quadcore means 2 x Dualcore as far as I remember. That means that 2 CPU cores share one Cache Memory block which optimizes performance. The performance gain when going from Single Core to Dual Core is usually higher than going from Dual Core to Quad Core. Nevertheless it's nice to have.

If you should run into troubles with the P5K (or any mainboard) then read through the following thread on the RME forum (problem with a P5K got solved there):

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2451

[thefool]

Quadcore means 2 x Dualcore as far as I remember. That means that 2 CPU cores share one Cache Memory block which optimizes performance. The performance gain when going from Single Core to Dual Core is usually higher than going from Dual Core to Quad Core. Nevertheless it's nice to have.

Yeah that sounds correct. BUT the performance gain from dual to quad certainly is noticable, and its close to double even with live. (check the live7 performance test results)

BUT again without a decent audio interface..

[lvehon]

Also remember when upgrading ram that XP only allots 4 gb of ram for the total system, so if your video card has 512 mb of memory then that leaves 3.5 gb left for everything else. You could upgrade to 4 gb but you may not get to use all of it depending on your the rest of your hardware.

[Timur]

Fireface 800 issues with P5K and onboard Firewire reported in this thread:

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=959

[HowardW]

Thanks for the advice all.

BUT. What audio interface are you running with?

Was planning on taking my EMU 4040 from my current comp, and I also have a Line 6 Line Port running into a spare USB. Seems to work well at the minute.

H

[thefool]

Thanks for the advice all.

BUT. What audio interface are you running with?

Was planning on taking my EMU 4040 from my current comp, and I also have a Line 6 Line Port running into a spare USB. Seems to work well at the minute.

H

Sounds fine