Ableton Forum

Greetings. I'm researching dumping my 5 year old craptop and getting a nice new Dell XPS 630 desktop to help me get more serious in the studio. I'm looking for opinions from the massive about pros/cons about which processor to get, namely the quad-core 6600 or the quad-core 9400 ($150 price difference). I searched the forums and found several recommendations for the Q6600 but nothing specifically about the 9400 and Ableton.

This is what I am looking to get in terms of the rest of the system:
*2X250 GB RAID 7200 RPM HDDs (have several external drives already loaded with sets, photos, and sound library)
*4GB of RAM in two DIMMS
*512 MB ATI graphics card (dual monitor)
*XP Pro downgrade from Vista (yuck)

Does anyone see any red flags in the above?

I have a Tascam 1641-USB. I run Live 7, will probably upgrade to 8 when it comes out. I've got GURU, Massive, and SampleMoog VSTs and use them extensively in almost all productions. Other than Ableton, I mostly use Photoshop and Macromedia creative suite products. I do zero gaming.

I found this excellent comparison for the processors:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... q9400.html

What say the masses - 6600 or 9400? Is it worth the extra $150?
(I have also thought about building my own...but I want to go with Dell for the warranty thanks to a bad experience in the past).

Thanks!

Q9400 is a smaller die (45nm), is slightly faster (2.66 v 2.4) and has a faster bus speed (1333 v 1066).

Personally i dont think its worth the $150, id think that money would be better spent on a cheap i7 in a couple of years time. You wont see that much performance difference unless youre maxing out the machine, which is unlikely!

as for RAID, i personally think its a waste of time in a DAW if youre using it for speed, but if youre using it as two identical redundant drives, then it at least gives you an extra layer of backup. 2 x 250gb 7200 is a rip off for a new computer, i would go with 1 x 1TB 7200, or 2 x 500gb 10000 rpm if youre going for speed.

If youre not playing games, I would go for a fanless video card to help keep noise down, they are often cheap and noisy fans.

Dells are a great machine. Actually they are the same components as everyone elses machine, but ive had nothing but excellent results from their support department, definitely get the Next Business day 3 year warranty.