No application under a 32 bit OS can use more than 2 gig of Ram. Its nothing to do with Ableton, its an addressing limit. Im not even sure if it applies to things like Stylus, are they running in Live's address space or their own?DrXparaMental wrote:I would LOVE to see real test results myself. It's abundantly clear that Live 7 supports 32bit multi track recording, but does not support 64bit multi track recording. Everything else is a mystery to me and I mean that emphatically. All I know is that I was told matter of fact that Live had distinct problems in 64bit. I have never ran a 64bit system and was seriously looking at purchasing an i7 professional rack mount computer.Live performs better on a quad than a dual. I know this, as Im running both of them and the performance difference is obvious. When I look at the performance monitor, Live is definitely using the 4 cores.
Even if youre not maxing out the specs of the Nehalem, it doesnt mean its a waste of money. New hardware usually takes years to reach its potential. I would bet a real world test will show that an i7 will run the Live performance test better than a Q quad. It has about a %30 performance benefit compared to the Q series clock speed, Ableton shouldnt be any different.
There are quite a few people on here running Live in a 64 bit OS, and very happily as far as their driver support allows. Which repeatable problems are there with Live on x64? Im toying with the idea of moving up myself at some point.
Only 2 gig ram able to be accessed per app? How did Liam Howlett ever make those amazing sounds using workstations whose sample sets topped out at 760k?
In my case, I certainly cant point at the computer as the bottleneck for my creative output! Its the thing between my ears that doesnt have enough bandwidth.
The tech person that I was talking to at this same company steered me away from the i7 by stating that Ableton has REAL issues in 64bit. He also made it clear that Live could not make use of the i7's unique internal systematic process with respect to a real performance increase over the Q series processors. He also stated that Ableton's software was unable to provide access to any more than a little over two gigs of ram while operated in a Windows OS. Whereas most other contemporary DAWs had made modifications to their written driver support that allowed for a much broader ram access diversity, Ableton has not at this time.
pants (and everybody else), listen to me, I don't KNOW shit and I'll be the first to make that abundantly clear. I am just relating what this tech made clear to me at ADK. Ableton is, and will most likely always be, my DAW of choice. It's the greatest audio design tool I have ever used short of my life long love affair with 4 strings and some electricity. That's why I decided to build a system that will best support it in 32bit, and can clearly and evidently move on to 64bit when Ableton either (a) officially is 64bit supported, or (b) I am confident that it will run 64bit from my interface to my monitors without any problems.
I will state that I am a little leery to buy the idea that an i7 can provide any real benefit to a 32bit user. I don't think it ever will be. I mean, why would it? Nobodies going to make the effort just to back pedal their software support to 32bit users because the squeaky loop gets the goop. I have to believe as you pointed out, that the the idea is to move FORWARD into the realm of the 64bit supported application.
What would be just as fascinating concerning this 64bit question, would be:
What is REALLY happening in Ableton Live when a user *is* running Live in V64? I mean, how many of the forefront functions and manipulations of Live are being accomplished (fully facilitated) by real 64bit support? Are sample access speeds faster and more cpu efficient? What about plugin support? How does that much work?
Does Reaktor when used as a plugin in Live actually benefit via the 64 bit platform?
As far as the i7 is concerned: What about efficiencies with respect to exponential voice computations?
Ever worked with Stylus RMX?
Wow! I just thought of something. Doh! I should be asking Eric about this stuff. He would know.
MR. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the center of an i7?
I'm just afraid his answer will have something to do with Logic and a Mac
anyone?
are you sure any of this matters? Have you come across any situation where a RAM limit of 2gb has hampered your creativity?
I only raise this, as you seem to think these issues are crucial to your purchase, when I would see them as marginal at best, and a distraction from the end goal ie making music and learning your craft. As much as I love chewing the fat about hardware, you can get lost in it pretty easy and it becomes its own pastime.
You cant go wrong with the Q6600 or similar at the moment. Fast, overclockable like buggery and pretty cheap.
