Whats An Average cpu load for your projects.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 12:57 am

bland_handl wrote:Nebulae,

Can you tell us any more about Hyperthreading and how to switch it off?
And does switching it off affect use with other audio apps?
(I'm running Live on a Powerbook w. OS Tiger)

Bland

Hyperthreading is only on PCs, not on Macs. I havn't owned a Mac in about 15 years. Sorry.

bland_handl · Post by **bland_handl** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:24 am

Yeah, fair enough - using Live has made me want to do the switch myself.

Hooked on Logic though, so guess I'll have to hope the Intel switch will save us beleagured mac users from poor cpu performance.

SimonPHC · Post by **SimonPHC** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 3:38 am

mike holiday wrote:all the way untill it pops

indeed

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 5:03 am

nebulae wrote: Hyperthreading is only on PCs, not on Macs. I havn't owned a Mac in about 15 years. Sorry.

hi,

could you say more about exactly what you have running on your PC. I've been fooling around with the demo on my mac for afew weeks, but it goes belly up when I have say, 3-4 VST/AU on 3 tracks (its only 800 DP G4). I'm going to get a PC laptop toward the end of the year, not specifically to run live, but it will feature. Do you think I would get reasonable efficiency out of a 2GHz PM, with a Gig of RAM? (obviously more is better, but one must set a limit on price). What might I be expecting to be able to run stable on that (such as VST, number of tracks etc.). The only soft 'synth' I'll be running is Kontakt 2, but that will incur alot of overhead in itself.

thankyou very much,

Leonard.

djshiva · Post by **djshiva** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 5:54 am

i find this topic interesting specifically because i started messing with one of the early versions of live on a 333mz p2 processor. you learn verrrrry quickly how to bounce down (and at that point, it was rendering to wav and bringing it back into the project, not just bussing it to another channel for resampling...or maybe you could then and i just didn't know how...anyway...).

even tho i am now running an athlon 64 3000+, i still tend to bounce down anything that i know i am not gonna change and dumping the vsts. if i think i may change something later, the live clips allow me to save the setup (can i mention now how much i LOVE liveclips?). that mindset has kept my projects not only low on the cpu meter, but incredibly neat and efficient to get through.

and in answer to this:

leonard wrote:
could you say more about exactly what you have running on your PC. I've been fooling around with the demo on my mac for afew weeks, but it goes belly up when I have say, 3-4 VST/AU on 3 tracks (its only 800 DP G4). I'm going to get a PC laptop toward the end of the year, not specifically to run live, but it will feature. Do you think I would get reasonable efficiency out of a 2GHz PM, with a Gig of RAM? (obviously more is better, but one must set a limit on price). What might I be expecting to be able to run stable on that (such as VST, number of tracks etc.). The only soft 'synth' I'll be running is Kontakt 2, but that will incur alot of overhead in itself.

thankyou very much,

Leonard.

check the Live 5 performance test thread. that has been a great indicator of what setups run live most efficiently.

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 6:24 pm

I load my songs up with stuff until it starts peaking the processor and clipping the audio. Then I find a way to get it to work by trimming the fat i guess.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:35 pm

usually 50-60% without anything freezed.

one i start using Reaktor or an Arturia Synth, i'll freeze 2 or 3 channels to keep the CPU @ about 50-60%.

it really depends what i have going on though. and every track has different fx/instruments.

a track i am currently working on has 12 channels:
within those 12 channels are 8 EQ4's, 1 Flanger, 1 Autopan, 1 Impulse (4 sounds), 1 Simpler (Pad) 2 Hydratones, 3 Utility Plugs, 1 Saturator, 1 Ping Pong delay
There's only 1 Return track with an AUMatrix Reverb and an EQ4,
and on the mains i have 1 EQ4 (i use for hp filter fx) , 1 Hydratone, and 1 FinalPlug v.5

peak usage with all channels going is 38%, nothing freezed. I'm happy with that.
I'll probably add 2 or 3 more sounds to this track before its finished. Maybe some Operator arpeggiations in the break, and a couple other drum sounds with Hydratones for variations. I don't see the track cracking 50% CPU before its finished though.

if i were to add an Arturia ARP2600v, i can easily get the track up to 45%, or if i add Reaktor i can get up to 60% quickly. But freeze makes it easy to get the CPU back. In fact freezing just the Pad track (Simpler/Saturator/AutoPan), and one of the Drum channels (Hydratone/Utility) gives me 10% CPU back.

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:41 pm

thanks for the replies lads!
I'm wading through the performance test thread now, some interesting results. There's no doubt altivec and dual processing support would boost a performance on a mac, but thats not for me to decide. I thinks a PC lappy somewhere in the range of 2G would be adequate for what I want.

cheers,
leonard.

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:18 pm

leonard wrote:thanks for the replies lads!
I'm wading through the performance test thread now, some interesting results. There's no doubt altivec and dual processing support would boost a performance on a mac, but thats not for me to decide. I thinks a PC lappy somewhere in the range of 2G would be adequate for what I want.

cheers,
leonard.

I am using an IBM Thinkpad 2.8ghz with 1gig RAM and a 7200rpm drive. no real problems unless I am just being crazy with VSTs and stuff.