Live - windows7 & quadcore laptop

[disco judas]

Hi,


Before I spend a gazillion $ on a quadcore laptop,

Is it worth it, or should I wait.

Is the one core for each channel working smooth on Windows7 quadcore laptops?

[stapum]

I have dual core laptop and a quadcore desktop both with 2.4 GHz CPUs and i can assure that the quad core is alot faster than the dualcore. Now for windows 7 i have nothing to say, i'm using XP pro on both computers, had vista on my laptop but rolled back to XP Pro wich is better for audio.

Take Care

[nebulae]

^ agreed completely with the above.

Keep in mind that a quad will be twice the power, and thus is totally worth it, if that's your only machine. If you have the desktop/lappie setup like stapum and I, then you can have the best of both worlds...meaning develop your songs on the desktop, and then render and do other things to take your liveset mobile.

[chis]

Using Windows 7 64-bit with a Q6600, Ableton runs fine. Some VST plugins may not, under 7 64-bit, however. But these days, 64-bit is the recommended way to go.

7 is a huge step up from Vista in many ways. MS will have my preorder, I'm so happy with the RC (on my primary workstation!).

[nebulae]

^Not sure I agree with the 64-bit being "the way to go" - I see no clear advantage. I have yet to have a liveset that takes more than 2gb of RAM. For me, the disadvantages of lack of driver support and some VST incompatibility issues makes it distinctly NOT the way to go.

Now if you're a big hollywood producer, and you gotto have 32gb of string samples, then go with 64-bits, or get a Mac (which you prolly have already).

But until the 64-bit issue is completely mainstream in the PC world, I ain't touching it. Same with Win7 - I know it's way better than Vista, but until it's rock solid for mainstream audio production, I'm staying on XP. Unless I see that the latency is AS GOOD or better than XP, I won't switch.

[leedsquietman]

wait until certain other forum users see these and then have a totally handbags hissy fit on you for not worshipping at the temple of windows 7

Driver support and compatibility/stability are everything - if you are so lucky that ALL of your hardware, audio interface, MIDI controllers, plugins etc are compatible with a 64 bit system, (and given that Live itself does not officially have 64 bit support yet), if you are one of those 'must get it first, gotta be first, have to be first' early adopters (which many people on this forum seem to be, and then many are griping about bugs and problems, surprise, surprise, doing this is the same as being a beta tester), then go for it.

The people who already have a reasonably powerful computer can in the meantime, make meaningful music on their rock solid XP or Mac OSX systems, while many of the early adopter, who believe themselves as 'cutting edge pioneers - we can save the world', are getting frustrated and scouring websites for technical support because it's not provided by any of the software applications as they don't officially support the product yet !!!

[nebulae]

I used to want the latest and greatest...but after XP, all that changed. I still think it's the OS to beat for efficiency, stability, and lowest latency. I ain't rocking that boat for anything that doesn't come close.

[leedsquietman]

Agreed, the DPC latency test figures prove that and although I have now gotten my windows vista 32 ultimate sp1 to run closer, it cannot yet match the low latency figures that XP SP3 can on my OLDER computer. Turning off the wifiand bluetooth, disabling the driver for the DVD player/writer helped significantly here. Turning off aero makes no difference.

It is manageable for most tasks, and definately when mixing with lots of plugins, handles that better without glitching and less need for track freezing (the new laptop is core2duo w/ 4GB ram and a fast 300 GB sata HDD, as opposed to a single core P4 laptop w/ 2GB ram and an EIDE drive which albeit at 7200 rpm is slower), so I find myself having to do tracking with my old computer and then switch to the new one for mixing.

It's not very practical - I was hoping to retire my old computer, or just use it in the basement for email and websurfing, but it hasn't worked out that way yet. Another bugbear is the RICOH firewire controller in the new computer is pants compared to the TI controller in the old laptop, so I am currently mixing on the built in card with asio4all, instead of being able to use my nice firewire interface because it chokes on the ricoh chipset under a lot less strain even with the extra computer power The other option would be to buy a good USB 2.0 interface, bah more expense when I already have a reasonable FW interface and am struggling in this recession ....

[BoNGoMaN]

I prefer to attend Services at the Tabernacle of Technology

A couple of things I take into mind when making a new purchase, is what platforms does my desired applications run on and what is the best performing hardware I can get for the budget I have.

Live is one of those lovely apps that is X-Platform and is one of the things that initially grabbed my attention.

As I'm sure that you are aware when purchasing a Laptop you generally only have a couple of hardware options that you can update at a later stage (i.e. RAM & HDD) so you want to get the Best CPU and Graphics/Display in the unit that suits your needs.

If you have found Laptop that you like and are delaying purchasing it now due to the uncertainty of the OS then you have the following options

If the Laptop comes with OEM Vista Business or Ultimate I believe your can still get the downgrade to XP option.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... esheet.pdf

Microsoft have just released a free upgrade offer to Windows 7 if you buy a Machine with come with Vista.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/buy/of ... grade.aspx

So you have a couple of options on the MS track or you can choose to go with Apple, who also have a nice looking new OS soon to be released.

Agreed when choosing the OS you need to consider Driver support otherwise you might not be able to use your Audio interface efficiently or worst case not at all.

If you know that your hardware works on either XP or Vista then you should be able to make a purchase in confidence now.

If you are keen to move up to Windows 7 then you can grab a copy of the release candidate and either run it on a test machine or dual boot it on the Laptop that you buy to make sure that all the drivers work before switching over to it on Oct 22nd.

I've been testing out the Win7 X64 beta/RC dual booting on a 2.5GHZ Quad Core 8GB RAM since the beginning of the year and have so far been impressed with it's performance over Vista.

What I have found so far is that most Vista x64 drivers will work with Windows 7. However I have found one little work around for getting Firewire Audio Interfaces to work correctly with Window 7. My Motu Traveler drivers wouldn't install correctly even when forced to run as administrator or Vista compatibility mode. I had to change the driver for the Texas Instruments 1394 controller to Legacy mode and then it would install and worked fine.

From what I have heard Windows 7 RTM will be released to partners on the 13th of this month so that will hopefully enable manufactures to create/improve the driver support by the time it is released to public. Some companies (i.e. NVidia) have already been providing regular driver updates for Windows 7 during the beta/RC stages so the outlook is looking promising.

Anyway have fun making a decision and then have even more fun making music

[chis]

I have yet to have a liveset that takes more than 2gb of RAM. For me, the disadvantages of lack of driver support and some VST incompatibility issues makes it distinctly NOT the way to go.

Driver support is improving all the time, the situation is far better now than it has ever been for XPx64. My setup required two driver installs for video and my audio interface. Neither required a restart, under Windows 7 64-bit, incidentally.

As for a liveset taking more than 2GB of RAM, are you aware of the 2GB allocation limit to a process under a 32-bit edition of Windows? Sure, your working methods may not require this much, but I'm sure many do. My latest project is taking 800~MB, and I expect that to expand all the time. Having only 1.2GB of potential "space" for Ableton left to play with is not encouraging to one's creativity.

I'm also aware that Live is not a 64-bit application, but under a 64-bit OS it should be capable of addressing more than 2GB of its own (I presume 4GB). That's still an improvement.

[nebulae]

I have yet to have a liveset that takes more than 2gb of RAM. For me, the disadvantages of lack of driver support and some VST incompatibility issues makes it distinctly NOT the way to go.

Driver support is improving all the time, the situation is far better now than it has ever been for XPx64. My setup required two driver installs for video and my audio interface. Neither required a restart, under Windows 7 64-bit, incidentally.

As for a liveset taking more than 2GB of RAM, are you aware of the 2GB allocation limit to a process under a 32-bit edition of Windows? Sure, your working methods may not require this much, but I'm sure many do. My latest project is taking 800~MB, and I expect that to expand all the time. Having only 1.2GB of potential "space" for Ableton left to play with is not encouraging to one's creativity.

I'm also aware that Live is not a 64-bit application, but under a 64-bit OS it should be capable of addressing more than 2GB of its own (I presume 4GB). That's still an improvement.

I appreciate all your arguments, but I'll take lower latencies over the potential of needed more ram (which I don't and won't). One is a real world current benefit; the other is a promise of newer/better/cooler, and my argument is quite simply that I don't care, when what I have now works great.