Ableton Forum

i'm checkin out all these laptops that are cheap and everything, they all have good specs but then i see the chips are celerons and Durons. can you good people give me a rundown on what the diff is between these and the pentiums.
Is a 1.7ghz celeron no good for Live and Reason + some work in sonar, or will it do the job?


thanks for the help folks

yeah a celery will do fine.. but its not the most optimal for audio. it would be best if you could get a P4 or an athlonXP. good luck

thanks for the imput jdg, does anybody else have any opinions or can elaborate on what jdg said?

I know I know, I just woke up when I first posted this myself, I think I should stop putting off getting a laptop and pick one up today, just need some pointers

well the celerons and durons have half as much cache and a slower front side bus.. so the speed at which stuff is piped in and out of the processor is slower, and with the smaller cache, less requests can stay close to the proccessor before it has to make a request to the systems RAM.

make sense? i wish you luck.

Check out the Performance Test threads, should give you some info on performance.

I just checked a Compaq Evo w/ 2.1 Ghz PIII, and it rocks big time - so maybe looking at "outdated" ones could be worth it.... this machine certainly performs better than a brand new 1 Ghz Powerbook - and I've tested this myself: The Compaq scored about 60 percent where a Powerbook overloaded and suffered dropouts of the severest kind (the Scenes were exactly identical...)

Hope this helps

format

Actually, you are comparing a 2.1 GHZ to a 1 GHZ so I don't see why you are surprised that it's better?

If you are serious about music production - performance, don't get a Celeron. It has only 1/4 of the Cache, which becomes a real bottle neck very quickly

what model # was that compaq? and Format, What other models have you tested, and could you summarize their performance, I thank you for the resources

I've been doing a bit of laptop hunting recently, for audio purposes. Can I recommend searching ebay for Compaq N1000V. This is a recently discontinued model that is highly discounted and includes a P4 2ghz processor and 15" screen, and I see that there are a few around. I was just about to buy one of these but went instead for a Compaq Evo 2814 (even though it's 300MHz slower) because of the higher resolution and the firewire port, and because the retailer stuffed up by selling it below cost! But otherwise, I would have gone for the N1000V. It has a desktop P4 CPU in it, whereas the one I bought has a mobile P4 CPU, and I think that would be slightly more efficient in a laptop.

cheers,
Gabe, New Zealand

thanks for the tip Gabe, hey I see you're from Nz, do they have a hiphop scene there?

Da Hand wrote:Actually, you are comparing a 2.1 GHZ to a 1 GHZ so I don't see why you are surprised that it's better?

That was a typo, sorry - I meant to write 1.1 Ghz....

::mic-minimal:: wrote:thanks for the tip Gabe, hey I see you're from Nz, do they have a hiphop scene there?

www.hiphopnz.com is pretty much the best place for the scene on the net.

and let me put in a plug for www.dubious.co.nz too, the site for the dubious bros, a good nz hiphop outfit.

nz music in general seems to be going well right now and the better hiphop has a nice local flavour, when they're not just trying to be american.

btw, since my last post I have read other people here saying they wouldn't take a compaq if it was given to them, well mine hasn't arrived yet so I can't speak with absolute confidence, but they seem nice and sturdy and a shitload cheaper than any other company.

cheers,
Gabe

duo core is recommended

Somebody is playing haha with the forum.....

I think that a Core2Duo is a minimum requirement for Live these days. If you spend just a little more than the average $500 lappie, you'll get a chip that will literally give you twice the dividends, and your lappie won't be choking after just a few tracks.

I bought my Core2Duo 2.4ghz almost a year ago, and I have no issues using it for performance or doing audio on the fly. I paid $725 for my Dell D630, so I'd say my lappie is prolly worth $650 now...