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CPU for Music Making

nicmcv

nicmcv

nicmcv

Associate
Joined
28 Nov 2005
Posts
48
Location
UK
Hiya Everybody

I'm going to be upgrading soon. After lots of reading in the forums I'm still unsure as to what processor would be good. There are many that represent excellent value Intel and AMD. I here the e2180 is good for overclocking, is it worthwhile, i've never overclocked, is it easy?

I make music on my pc (or at least that's what I call it ;) ), at the mo I have an AthlonXP3200 (stock) will I notice a significant increase in in performance when switching. I use lots of plugins in Cubase and Wavelab, these tax the CPU so I can only run a finite amout before my pc starts to buckle. I'm hoping to be able to at least double the amount of plugs I can run.

There are many factors which will determine the performance so I'm just going for ball park idea's at the mo. If you have any recomends for a MOBO and RAM to go woth the CPU I'm all ears.

All the best.

Nic
 
Q6600 for Cubase and Wavelab bud. I know its exepnsive but for CPU heavy programs such as those its in its own league, especially with the all the plug-ins running. Also 4gb of ram wont be too shabby if you're on XP64 or Vista64.

I use mine primarily for Sony Vegas, Maya and also quite a bit of gaming and have to say the difference from my E1280 was massive. Gaming was not so noticeable but on Maya it was literally a wow moment when I first ran it.

Q6600 = £152.74
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard = £76.36
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 XTC Series DDR2 = £35.24 (x2 for 4gb)

Hope this help..!!
 
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Sounds like quite a chip

Thanks for the wisdom.

I had a quick look, quad core's are pretty good value for money, good price for that one at the mo. I guess if I got that I'd have to overclock it as it looks ripe for it.

As I understand it Cubase doesn't yet take advantage of multicore 64bit processing. Does Vegas take advantake of multi-cores? To make matters slightly more complicated with regard to plugins, i understand that you only achieve true 64bit performance when everything in the software chain is 64bit (DAW plugs etc). This is what I'm really interested in. When a system can run like this I beleive it knocks spots off everything and run a shed load of plugs.

I'm going to switch to Sonar as they have had active support for Vista and Multi-cores since V5 (now v 7). I don't really want to change, but as stienberg have not persued this as activly as other companies my hand is forced.

I see you have 2gb of RAM, I fancy 4gb, as far as i know this is optimum for what I need to do, however it is all app dependent. You run video apps which must chew up a lot so I guess 2gb must be good. Ill defo run Vista64.

I hear SATA RAM disks are rather good for speeding up OS and Apps, do you know much about them, or is it just another computer distraction vying for my attention, taking precious time away from music creation :)

Also have you tried sticking in a USB stick to give Vista a RAM boost, no idea if this works. Sound interesting though.

Thanks again.

Nic
 
Cubase doesnt support multiple cores no, so anything you buy will only be ran at 1/4 speed (in theory) but they are still very fast chips anyway. As regards to 64-bit, there is no 64-bit version of any DAW as far as i'm aware, let alone the plug-ins being 64-bit. You can still go with the 64-bit OS however. :)

Cubase doesn't particularly like Vista by the way. Not saying that you shouldn't go for Vista, but be aware that there are issues with it crashing and not working properly on some systems.
 
nicmcv said:
Thanks for the wisdom.

I had a quick look, quad core's are pretty good value for money, good price for that one at the mo. I guess if I got that I'd have to overclock it as it looks ripe for it.

As I understand it Cubase doesn't yet take advantage of multicore 64bit processing. Does Vegas take advantake of multi-cores? To make matters slightly more complicated with regard to plugins, i understand that you only achieve true 64bit performance when everything in the software chain is 64bit (DAW plugs etc). This is what I'm really interested in. When a system can run like this I beleive it knocks spots off everything and run a shed load of plugs.

I'm going to switch to Sonar as they have had active support for Vista and Multi-cores since V5 (now v 7). I don't really want to change, but as stienberg have not persued this as activly as other companies my hand is forced.

I see you have 2gb of RAM, I fancy 4gb, as far as i know this is optimum for what I need to do, however it is all app dependent. You run video apps which must chew up a lot so I guess 2gb must be good. Ill defo run Vista64.

I hear SATA RAM disks are rather good for speeding up OS and Apps, do you know much about them, or is it just another computer distraction vying for my attention, taking precious time away from music creation :)

Also have you tried sticking in a USB stick to give Vista a RAM boost, no idea if this works. Sound interesting though.

Thanks again.

Nic
Click to expand...

I actually run 4gb of ram (in sig) 4x1gb of Crucial Ballistix which run very very fast, they will overclock to about 1200mhz stable should I need to. I just whack the CPU (to 3.6) and ram up (to 1198mhz) when I know I'm going to be doing some seriously demanding work as my mobo allows me to save BIOS config profiles and just load when required. Otherwise it sits as it is in sig.

If I were you for the minute I would just stick to run of the mill CPU, RAM & Mobo setup and see how that performs. On the Vista ready boost issue, I've never tried it but understand it will only aid performance when there is a lack of system ram.

The op above may be better on advising you on cubase and its compatiblity as I have never used it.
 
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Thanks mancubus & ozzie

Thats given me plenty to chew on. I think I'll go in the direction you chaps recommend. Given that it takes some time for software and drivers to appear for a new OS I'll stick to simple stuff for now (CPU RAM and MOBO).

I put a PC together for my Dad a few months ago and was really quite impressed with how easy it was to build and how well Vista ran after I customised/optomised it.

I guess it's a diffrent beast when you need to get down to the nitty gritty. Vista runs slow on my lappy (initialy), but thats cause it's one of the first dual core's and only has 1gb of ram. I think I'll upgrade it to Vista 64 Ulitmate as it's on Vista 32.

It seems that quite a few PC owners who use them for creating music do overclock. would you recommend it?

Thanks again for the advice.

Nic
 
nicmcv said:
It seems that quite a few PC owners who use them for creating music do overclock. would you recommend it?
Click to expand...

Definitely. Say you got a Q6600, which runs at 2.4Ghz - you might well be able to overclock that to 3.6Ghz. So the CPU is going to process your music 50% faster, whether the app is multi-core enabled or not. It does take a little while to get everything stable and configured correctly, but think of the hours you'll save with that kind of performance improvement.
 
Mattus said:
Definitely. Say you got a Q6600, which runs at 2.4Ghz - you might well be able to overclock that to 3.6Ghz. So the CPU is going to process your music 50% faster, whether the app is multi-core enabled or not. It does take a little while to get everything stable and configured correctly, but think of the hours you'll save with that kind of performance improvement.
Click to expand...

Given that it's 50% I think I just might do it. I don't have to run it OC'd all the time so it would really be worth it for complex arrangements with loads of plugs. When I just use the net I could turn the settings down.

Thanks
 
OzZie said:
Doesnt't quite work like that. Once it's overclocked and stable, you keept it running like that :D
Click to expand...

Unless you have a mobo like mine that allows the saving of Bios config's then its just a case selecting the config you want before the PC boots into windows.

And to nicmcv, not overclocking a Q6600 is actually a crime and you can go to prison for it..!! :D
 
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yeah your not doing your cpu any damage when its at a stable oc so dont worry about that, it sounds like you have a lot of plugins running to be struggling with 4gb's of ram?
 
Not guaranteed that you'll get 50% but with reasonable hardware you're pretty much certain to get 3.1-3.2.

I wouldn't bother turning the settings down - easier just to keep it as-is. It will shorten the life of the CPU slightly, but it will still easily be good for 5+ years, by which point you won't want it any more anyway!
 
You chaps have convinced me

This is excellent feedback, thanks so much MaNcUbUs, OzZiE, Mattus and stevenazari1

I have been resisting OC’ing for a while now, but the prospect of doing it to a quad core like the q6600 is too tempting. Intel are practically goading people to do it. 2.4 up to 3.6 is amazing. Given that it’s spread over 4 cores makes my mind boggle.
Last time I had a bash (at oc’ing ;)) four years ago, it all seemed relatively straight forward. Now it is practically standard for peeps what build their own computers to ramp those parts right up. There is a lot more choice for OC’ing too. As time passes computing power is dropping in price a lot, so these days it just knocks me out what I can do on a PC. I remember buying half a meg of RAM for my Amiga, £125. £125 for half a meg, flippin heck, I can get 4gb for £80ish.

Speaking of Amiga’s, I think I remember chat from the time about true multitasking. This appears to have actually happened recently as computer power is getting nice and fat. I’m a bit out of touch really as to what PC’s or MAC’s are capable of. I saw a clip on youtube of a chaps PC. He had 3 monitors and had a fast processor and ram etc. What got my attention was he was running a game as his desktop background, not manic miner but like some Jucied up monty sized shooter. I tried running as many apps and video’s on my dad’s vista pc I built for him and got bored opening so many different apps before it started to glitch. I can’t wait to get one.

Nic
 
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Remember to get a decent soundcard too. No point in getting an amazing system if you get a cheap m-audio or something. Spend at least £150 so that you can get the low buffers and latency. :)
 
You are right there. Think I might go for an RME Hammerfall at some point. For the meantime I might have to get a 2496 or summit.
 
OzZie said:
Remember to get a decent soundcard too. No point in getting an amazing system if you get a cheap m-audio or something. Spend at least £150 so that you can get the low buffers and latency. :)
Click to expand...

Just out of interest, I've got a Audigy 2 (can't remember the exact model) and I'm running it with the KX driver. I manage to get 21. ms latency. I think that's not to shabby for an old rig like mine.:) However, I want more, or less. erm.

What card do you use?
 
http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/828/

Cost me about £400 with educational discount for my home studio. Fantasic for Cubase and gives me a 2.9ms latency. However, the "ultralite" model by MOTU is also fantastic and offers most of the functionality, but is USB2 and doesnt have as many I/O's. :)

By the way, you want a lower latency with a low buffer size. Once you start creating multiple monitored tracks, it soon uses up the ASIO driver and so you compensate by increasing the buffer. However, this increases the recording latency and so should really be opened up after your recording is all complete.
 
2.9ms latency, thats almost non exsistant

I had no idea. the 828 is smashing, I've read about it. For the price the range of features make it unrivaled. You can connect it to anything you chuck at it. I also heard it has excellent timing.

I'll have to save up for a wee while to afford that one. I quite fancy this
http://www.tcelectronic.com/Default.asp?Id=11055
as you can use the compressor and reverb when you are tracking, and you have the option of recording it with or without fx while monitoring with fx. That caught my attention.

I checked out confetti, do you work there? It looks amazing. From the photos it looks like there is a stack of good gear there. Wish I lived in Nottigham, i would pop in just for a gawp. Bet the courses are good to.
 
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nah don't work there, doing their music technology course. The courses are amazing and you learn a heap load of information every time you go in there. Plus the groups are tiny also it means you get to use all of the gear. :)

I'll get you some pics of my recording gear setup soon if i can. I actually have a seperate computer just for my music recording which has the soundcard and a patchbay already built into the case. You can also do pre and post monitoring on most soundcards if they have the power. It's get's quite complicated so won't go into it now. lol

Can i ask what kind of music you will be recording? if you are into synth styles and dance etc, then you will probably be using lots of VST instruments, which drags the ASIO driver to a halt. If you are like me and record mostly traditional music with guitars and drums etc then make sure you get a soundcard that has lots of XLR and Line ins so that you can simply assign you inputs and outputs in cubase whilst keeping everything physically connected.

Took me a few months to finally justify spending nearly £450 on a soundcard, but when you look at what you get when you spend less, it kind of convinces you to spend the extra.

Good luck building your new system.
 
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Maybe you can make a thread about heavy duty sound cards for music making in Sound City

I built my first 'Audio Production' machine for a client just a year ago, interesting experience. Just a Opteron 170 (dual-core) 2GBs RAM and 500GBs storage.

I don't know much about the soundcard because the producer plugged that in when i was finished, think it was called an RME Fireface 800, not cheap! :eek:
 
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