Powerbook 1.3ghz upgrades:7200rpm/1.5gigRAM: disappointment

ekg · Post by **ekg** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 12:31 am

hey all, i've been trying relentlessly to get a Powerbook 17" system optimized for minimum latency (with MH mobile i/o soundcard) so i can do MIDI-drum input with the buffer set around 200, for best response with Impulse.
Before i started spending money, i emailed Ableton Support and also posted to this forum to see if anyone could recommend whether upping RAM from 1 gig to 1.5 gig, or upgrading the 4200rmp HD to 7200.. or upgrading from Jaguar 10.27 to Panther 10.34.... which out of these might best help LIVE4 run snappier, to take some strain off the CPU perhaps. no response from the forum, nor the (probably taxxed due to new release) Ableton Support. so i took the plunge on all 3. the difference is minimal at best, and in the case of the RAM: the original 1 gig is actually performing marginally better than 1.5 gig! i know its not a bad gig-chip, 'cause by itself i get the same result as my 2-512's. i've seen another user on a non-music forum report this puzzling result as well.. both of us using Xbench to determine. so something is wrong here. either the OS doesnt make efficient use of the RAM, or Xbench isn't reading performance correctly, or????. actual real-world use with an intensive LIVE project shows no discernible difference. so....
Anyway, the only upgrade path i can recommend is to first at least get to that 1 gig of RAM level, then maybe the 7200rpm. but the best path would be the fastest processor you can afford... or... GET A PC! I've got $3000 invested into a system that gets smoked by my friend's $1000 PC laptop. Hey Ableton: after so recently shelling out to upgrade to v3, I grudgingly paid the $119 for v4, half in order to get the supposed better integration of the G4 Altivec processor, announced prominently in the feature list. i'm not feeling it. if 4.02 doesnt make some progress in this regard, then what? wait for version 5??
And of course, the jury's out on the topic of G4 vs. G5 (i got a 1.6 G5 iMac on order just in case. can't say i'm not trying).
rock it, real-time
-EKG

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 1:06 am

the mac improvements were NOT Altivec or G4 specific. Ableton has pretty much stated that because of the way it works, Live wouldn't be that improved by Altivec, but they might try it in the future. I wouldn't get an imac and expect a major improvement. Maybe a single 1.8, or a dual 2 or 2.5, but realistically your machine is pretty dammed fast as it is.

All I can say is I make do with an 800mhz. powerbook with a 5400 rpm drive in it.

I don't expect to upgrade for another year an a half at least.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 7:05 am

it was never said that Live 4's mac optimizations were altivec. it was *Speculated by many list members / users, but the Abletons on several occasions said it was NOT altivec, hence the G3 users got the small performance boost as well.

i think better performance on macs is a must too, i totally agree with that. but you can't say that you were fooled. They never said it was Altivec - and when asked they specified that it was NOT Altivec.

drumroll57 · Post by **drumroll57** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 8:19 am

ekg wrote:And of course, the jury's out on the topic of G4 vs. G5 (i got a 1.6 G5 iMac on order just in case. can't say i'm not trying).

Look, I really feel you there. I have been working with a 1 GHz Tibook for almost two years, and as I feel it is nearing the end of its 'mission-critical' days, grudgingly decided to get the 1.5 GHz one, because that's all Apple has got, and feeling like sh*t about it when I see the benchmarks compared to my Centrino 1.7 GHz Dell... Then again, PC won't run Numerology, Melodyne and lots of other cool software!!

But there are very good resources out there if you are hell-bent on making you machine faster, you should give serious consideration to THIS DOCUMENT, which claims that you can get a performance gain of around 15% to 25% if you turn off all non-essential services.

That's of course no printers, no Internet, email, instant messaging and many other graphic-realted perks, but I believe that when you critically need a 20% performance boost and your machine is dedicated to music, this maybe worth looking into. please use at your own risk and be prepared to reformat if things really crap out..(maybe you could try this on an external boot disk?)

You may also want to set up a separate 'user account' for just this, so that when you log on as yourself, you can still browse the Net and your internal network... (and for music you just log in as the 'music user') ?

A primitive way of doing this is to go into your terminal window, and at the command prompt, type:

(ignore the #, that's to show the command prompt)

Code: Select all

# top

(the process listing shows you what's going on, note the process numbers for anything you want to terminate, be careful, for example AIM might be process 431)
then type

Code: Select all

# [Ctrl] + c

(this lets you exit the 'top' process viewer)
Again, at the command prompt, type the following, where 431 might be the AIM process you want to terminate :

Code: Select all

# sudo kill -9 431

it will prompt you for your admin password
after you enter it, the process will be 'killed'
Repeat at will. when finished, do 'top' again, you should see a noticeable difference on your CPU usage if you killed many processes, including 'CUPS' (printer drivers), and so on.

Wish I could offer you more comfort... On the plus side of things, I remember making music (which sold a lot more than it sells today) with a 286 PC or a Mac Plus, and still thankful for these beasts we have today.... That's an interesting aspect of it! More powerful computers to make music that sells less and less. Wonder if there's a correlation? LOL!!!

D.

drumroll57 · Post by **drumroll57** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 8:26 am

To ekg:

We seem to have an OS-X optimizing success story HERE

Also this one, some COMMENTS from the author

D.

::mic-minimal:: · Post by **::mic-minimal::** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 9:31 am

when did melodyne become mac only?

ekg · Post by **ekg** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 9:44 am

regarding Altivec: Yeah, i concede (after looking back now), that due to a rather vague description in LIVE4's pre-sales promo, maybe i jumped to conclusions here. It was often stated that G4 support was on their hot-list to address in a next upgrade. when v3 came out, we were left waiting. when v4 came out, the following was listed among v4's attributes:

"More new Features
..........
Audio performance has been optimized for Macintosh computers."

since i presume that the G4 chip had become the most prominent among the Mac user base, I took this to mean that Ableton had finally optimized LIVE for Altivec. (how presumptuous of me)...

Hey, thanks for everybody chiming in with suggestions... I'm a bit burnt on the techie side of things the past 10 days since starting the HD/RAM/OS upgrade process. swapping HDs on an aluminum Powerbook was only the beginning (had to find the instructions on a Japanese website).... STILL DON'T KNOW WHY 1.5 gigs of RAM doesn't register any performance gain over 1 gig!!! Anybody venture a guess on this one?

cheers,
E>K>G

ekg · Post by **ekg** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 9:56 am

BTW: i agree that old-school gear can still do a lot, and that we're relatively spoiled these days.... GIGahertz afterall!!
The main reason i NEED the speed is so i can feed LIVE4's MIDI-in from my Roland Handsonic, and play real-time breakbeats with near-zero latency.. for best expression with Impulse. i don't really work with all that many tracks or plug-ins, just a low-as-possible buffer size. i've gotten it down to 200 w/o too much break-up.
I'd throw down $1200 tomorrow and test the darkside with a PC laptop, but one more factor to consider: my Metric Halo soundcard is Mac-only...
so I'll see how the new (pretty portable) iMac g5 fares before i go any further with darkside plans... I have a feeling the g5/1.6 iMac will be neck and neck with the g4/1.3 PB, and so i don't think i'd have too much regret selling the AlBook and recouping about $1500.
cheers,
E>K>G

Chris Cowie · Post by **Chris Cowie** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 3:54 pm

ekg wrote: Before i started spending money, i emailed Ableton Support and also posted to this forum to see if anyone could recommend whether upping RAM from 1 gig to 1.5 gig, or upgrading the 4200rmp HD to 7200.. or upgrading from Jaguar 10.27 to Panther 10.34.... which out of these might best help LIVE4 run snappier, to take some strain off the CPU perhaps. no response from the forum, nor the (probably taxxed due to new release) Ableton Support. so i took the plunge on all 3. the difference is minimal at best, and in the case of the RAM: the original 1 gig is actually performing marginally better than 1.5 gig!
-EKG

I have been taking with Mark H a member on this forum about my terribly slow titanium Powerbook g4 1.33mghz. With garage band I can only get 6 tracks before complete system slowdown which makes it unuseable. Quite ridiculous really. If I try and complete a track using Ableton Live 3 I simply cant do it. (anyway I really only use the laptop for live work) but it would be nice if I could actually do a finished track with it when Im on the road.

I just bought the machine around 3 months ago upgrading from my Titanium G4 500mhz.

I was very dissapointed with the overall performance increase, not just with AB Live but with everything I use. To be honest I barely notice any increase in performance over my older G4 500mhz.

Mark H has reported a dramatic increase when he installed a hitachi 7200rpm drive and upped the ram to 1.5 gig and I was just about to take the plunge and do the same. But after your post and readiing other reports on various forums I have seen a number of people saying the increase in performance is minimal.

I dont see this as an Ableton Live problem, this is more of Apple macs simply being underpowered. Their very own garage band proves that one.

Im getting rather hacked off with Apple macs to be honest. I have owned a number of them for studio work and was never really happy with performance considering their price. I switched to using PC for studio work around 9 months ago and am delighted with the overall performance and the cost of the machine was half that of a G5. Stability has not been a problem.

But, before I bought my new powerbook for livework I bought a sony viao 2.8ghz laptop which gave me a lot of problems in every area and it was terribly slow for some reason and it failed on me during the recording of a Live DJ set. Luckily I got shot of it pronto. Hence the purchase of the powerbook.

I think I will go for the faster drive because surely that will help increase track count. but I am doubtful extra ram makes all that much difference.

In saying that my powerbook and motu 828mk11 have performed flawlessly with every gig I have done. So for the moment im sticking with it. I only use Ableton Plugins and even then I only use about 4 maximum during a live set. If I started loading up tons of 3rd party plugs I would expect a disaster at some point and obviously I just dont think my mac could handle it.

have you noticed any increase in overall track count within AB Live using your faster drive, and which drive did you buy?

Cheers

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 8:13 pm

If you want higher track counts,
i would actually recommend a 5400rpm HD for OSX Powerbooks
the Toshiba MK8026GAX 5400rpm specifically

it actually BEATS the 7200rpm in Read operations,
according to http://barefeats.com/pb12.html

the 7200rpm shown in the graph is the Hitachi 7K60 7200rpm, note its actually SLOWER than the stock 4200rpm hard drives. this could be a huge factor in the lack of performance increase you've seen.

Now for multitrack recording, the 7200rpm is better because that is a WRITE function, but strangely, the 5400rpm has far better READ ability.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 8:43 pm

oh yea forgot to mention... the Toshiba 5400rpm has a 16MB Cache, twice that of any 7200rpm laptop drives.

ekg · Post by **ekg** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 1:16 am

that's interesting news... and thanks for passing on this link. I suppose given the choice all over again, i'd go with this 80gig Toshiba. i miss that extra 20 gigs of space after sacrificing the stock internal 80 gig drive, and i'm sure that 7200RPM at some point becomes a bit of a heat issue compared to 5400.

still wondering about this RAM issue though (1.5 gigs benching-out slower than 1 gig)...
Once i figure this one out, its back to making music...
at least til the iMac g5 arrives...

cheers,
E>K>G

MarkH · Post by **MarkH** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 3:38 am

EKG - I've never known anyone to associate faster hard drive and more ram to give better CPU optimzation. Typically the golden rule is:

More ram = better host application performance

Faster HD = Higher track count

Faster CPU = More plugins

MarkH · Post by **MarkH** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 3:44 am

AdamJay wrote:If you want higher track counts,
i would actually recommend a 5400rpm HD for OSX Powerbooks
the Toshiba MK8026GAX 5400rpm specifically

Now for multitrack recording, the 7200rpm is better because that is a WRITE function, but strangely, the 5400rpm has far better READ ability.

Adam - The thing to watch is whether that's reading from cache rather than the raw hard drive. Supposedly the "Read" performance is double the 7200, but ironically the cache is double. This would also explain why Write performance is better on the 7200.

I can ASSURE YOU that loading apps on the 7200 drive is MUCH MUCH MUCH MUUUUUUCH faster than the 4200, yet that chart shows it's only marginally faster. That's BS.

I used my 4200 RPM drive for about a week before I installed the 7200, and it would be ludicrous to say the 4200 was anywhere close to the 7200.

This is from Xlr8YourMac. Take note to the un-cached reads.

ekg · Post by **ekg** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:34 am

<<more memory and installing a faster hard drive has never provided more optimized Core Audio or ASIO performance on either Mac or PC under any sequencer.
....More memory = better Host performance. Bigger HD = more audio tracks. Faster CPU = more Plugins.>>

Mark,
my disappointment is half based on Ableton's sales-speak claims of version 4's "better audio performance on Mac", coupled with v3 never addressing this before jumping from 3.04 to a paid v4, and exasperated by what seems like a reduced level of responsiveness at their tech support dept... but whatever... v4's MIDI-in is revolutionary, and after having my ventilation here, i'm done complaining.

I'm not expecting that RAM or HD upgrades would "optimize" the Core audio, but, not being much of a Mac techie, i was venturing the guess that these upgrades might take some stress of the processor, and my buffer setting needs of 200 might be do-able... Bottom line is I apparently still have to deal with intermittent audio break-up if i want this low latency level for live playing with Impulse... and i want to make my case known for those who might be considering the same configuration.
my main attention right now however are those Xbench results: I'm starting to wonder if a Powerbook's OS can efficiently utilize more than a gig of RAM. And as for LIVE's use of RAM, i wonder why you can't load Impulse samples into RAM as one can with any session clip's sample. Perhaps it already does this behind the scenes?

thanks again all,
E>K>G

Powerbook 1.3ghz upgrades:7200rpm/1.5gigRAM: disappointment

Powerbook 1.3ghz upgrades:7200rpm/1.5gigRAM: disappointment

Re: Powerbook 1.3ghz upgrades:7200rpm/1.5gigRAM: disappointm

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