Ableton Forum

Im currently in the market for a new computer and have about a $1200.00 budget to purchase a new computer. My question is the intel i5's pc's doing good as far as latency goes, or should i be looking at buying a computer with and i7 chip? Ive recently been getting into doing a lot more vocals and live recording so the lowest possible latency for my money is important to me. The only other thing that im clueless about right now is the launch of usb3.0 and the newest, faster technology called "thunderbolt" Im just wondering if i should be waiting until both of those are implemented onto more computers.... Would love some input on what works and more importantly what i should stay away from.

Fast i5 is good enough for current Live (if not runing anything else), i7 will be alot better if ableton do what many think they need to do for live 9, but at higher cost for equivalent Live 8 performance I think.

Main advantage for Live 8 with the i7 is it lets you run more background stuff or another application like reason/traktor/serato/maschine standalone etc way better.

I will be using reason and serato in the background a lot of the time. I also like recording on a vocal track with efx on already which eats up a lot of cpu. Sounds like the i7 would be the safe way to go. What about
AMD? Or is that a lost cause?

If I had the cash, this would be my next computer:

http://www.studiocat.com/2/index.php/i7 ... dio_Laptop

Dj Spuratic wrote:What about
AMD? Or is that a lost cause?

Dunno - 'yer pays for whats yer gets' right?

Personally - wouldnt touch them for studio DAW with a very long barge pole. Or for that matter anything with a dodgy non-intel chipset in it, might be fine for games, telly, web, office stuff etc, but Id rather not spent the next 18 months trouble shooting it for DAW use. (Now Im sue someone hacking about will pipe in say all works fine in their nvidia/sis/via or whatever system that runs two out channels only at 44.1/20ms latency or so in a moment )

Anything Mac haha. Clean it up.

get the sandy bridge i7 2700k and the corsair force sdd. Live loads up before i can blink.

Khazul wrote:

Dj Spuratic wrote:What about
AMD? Or is that a lost cause?

Dunno - 'yer pays for whats yer gets' right?

Personally - wouldnt touch them for studio DAW with a very long barge pole. Or for that matter anything with a dodgy non-intel chipset in it, might be fine for games, telly, web, office stuff etc, but Id rather not spent the next 18 months trouble shooting it for DAW use. (Now Im sue someone hacking about will pipe in say all works fine in their nvidia/sis/via or whatever system that runs two out channels only at 44.1/20ms latency or so in a moment )

That does not happen even in my old X2 4800e & AM2+ , I just wonder what would happen if I had a PhenonII X6 lol.


Anyway USB3 is now usual in mid to high end PC desktops and looks to be also in high end Sandy Bridge laptops too.

For thunderbolt for now you need a Apple MBP, in the future I GUESS you can by a expansion carrd for it (desktop only?).

I almost certainly pulled the trigger on getting an imac, but ive had pc's my whole life and really why abandon them now when they are almost just as powerful and reliable as macs...there are still pro's and con's to each, but i really feel like the right pc can be on par with a mac. Its been a long thought process, but for the money and the head ace of switching all my programs i will just stick with pc.

And as for AMD, my last 2 laptops have been AMD...the first one lasting about 4 years and the current one is 6 years old...i still produce with ableton and gig with serato on a regular basis, but i know that intel is currently the big boy on the block..i just have a draw towards AMD from having literally zero issues with them in the last 10 or so years.

pc999 wrote:Anyway USB3 is now usual in mid to high end PC desktops and looks to be also in high end Sandy Bridge laptops too.

For thunderbolt for now you need a Apple MBP, in the future I GUESS you can by a expansion carrd for it (desktop only?).

USB3 AKAIK is not yet a feature of current intel chipsets. Its mosty provided by an NEC USB3 controler chip and so far I havnt been entirely impressed with it. Safer
to run a high end USB2 audio interface via one of the intel USB2 ports than an NEC USB3 port which so far Ive found basically OK for controllers and mice, but CPU use shot up quite alot pluging my RME UFX into the NEC USB3 ports on this PC.

I think intel might introduce it with the next update to the sandy bridge support chipsets - I guess hence why the latest MBPs are USB2 and get thunderbolt instead as apple probably like to stick with the most problem free hardware as well (generally, not allways - a certain FW chipset use comes to mind...).

BTW CalDigit (probably well know to high end Mac pro users, particularly commecial studios, but not to PC users), do a load of USB3 express card based external storage solutions for mac which are pretty good - high transfer rates etc, perhaps they have optimised their drivers to work well with the NEC chips while others havnt yet?

I think RME did a recent update to improve compatibility, but I havnt retried it.

Dj Spuratic wrote:Im currently in the market for a new computer and have about a $1200.00 budget to purchase a new computer. My question is the intel i5's pc's doing good as far as latency goes, or should i be looking at buying a computer with and i7 chip? Ive recently been getting into doing a lot more vocals and live recording so the lowest possible latency for my money is important to me. The only other thing that im clueless about right now is the launch of usb3.0 and the newest, faster technology called "thunderbolt" Im just wondering if i should be waiting until both of those are implemented onto more computers.... Would love some input on what works and more importantly what i should stay away from.

Use an Intel i7 2600k

Cost $300 approx

Overclock up to 4.9G

If you want to have best bang for bug, then wait for AMD Scorpius(Sockel AM3+) Platform and Bulldozer CPUs.
Take 8 cores for less than intels pricing.
at least RAM is as much important as CPU and HDD speed.

Just an update to this thread just in case there are others that are like I was, confused about what to get. I ended up getting a Gateway DX4850. It has 4 I7 2600 2nd gen that runs 8 virtual cores. This thing screams!!!! I decided to save more money and wait for my purchase and has proven to be a good decision. Being a dj/remixer I can now do scratching and recording of anything from my turntables into ableton with almost zero latency. This was one of my main deciding factors that went into the decision to wait and save more money. I spent $1,100.00 and that price also included a Samsung 23 inch led monitor. I couldn't be happier with my purchase and would strongly advise to hold out and save as much as you can for your purchase.