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Cubase SX3 Performance with Core 2 Quad Q6600

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Steve

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Feb 17, 2008, 10:33:42 AM2/17/08
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Hi all;

I just upgraded my DAW to a Core 2 Quad Q6600. Although the performance is
astounding during playback (20 tracks, with VST effects on all and the
processor bar is barely regestering), during mixdown I am a little
dissapointed. When I monitor my processor performance during mixdown, it
seems like my process is being utulized at less than 50% of it's potential.
Mixdowns was where I was hoping to see the greatest gains.

Does anyone have some suggestions on what to do? I am running the latest
SX3 with all patches.

Thanks;
Steve


McZippity SODDI

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Feb 17, 2008, 1:22:11 PM2/17/08
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"Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote in message
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Reverb eats processing.


Steve

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Feb 17, 2008, 6:14:56 PM2/17/08
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I don't think you understood my post. When I mixdown and look at my
processor performance it has plenty of overhead left (it's not even using
half of my processors potential).

Steve

"McZippity SODDI" <nu...@void.net> wrote in message
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daz.diamond

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Feb 17, 2008, 6:52:07 PM2/17/08
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just checking - you're not using real-time export ?

daz

Laurence Payne

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Feb 17, 2008, 7:11:19 PM2/17/08
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>Watch out what you're admitting to.
>http://www.swingingheaven.co.uk/dogging/
On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:14:56 -0500, "Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote:

>I don't think you understood my post. When I mixdown and look at my
>processor performance it has plenty of overhead left (it's not even using
>half of my processors potential).

That's good, isn't it? Are you getting nice quick mixdowns?

Steve

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Feb 17, 2008, 10:38:28 PM2/17/08
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No. The "Real Time Export" is not checked.

Thanks.
Steve
"daz.diamond" <sp...@spam.com> wrote in message
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Steve

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Feb 17, 2008, 10:43:04 PM2/17/08
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Faster than with my Pentium D 940, but not as fast as I expected it to be
for a Q6600. A mixdown that took aout 1:30, now takes about 1 minute. I
was thinking this was going to dramatically drop, not just a little.

Is there anything I can check (my processor scheduling is set to "background
services"), that's the only thing I can think of.

Steve

"Laurence Payne" <NOSPAMlpayne1ATdsl.pipex.com> wrote in message
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nickm

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Feb 18, 2008, 1:08:53 AM2/18/08
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"Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote in message
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I'd say that's not a bad improvement at all. All you've done in your system
is to double the number of CPU cores, so to knock a third off the time it
takes to complete a mixdown is good. You would assume that by doubling the
number of CPU cores that you would halve the processing time. It never
works out like that. Additionally is Cubase SX 3 capable of fully
utilising a four core CPU? I think not. Unfortunately PC performance isn't
just about CPU speed or power as I'm sure you appreciate. With everything
else the same as it was before the CPU upgrade, the bottlenecks that were
there before the upgrade, will still be there. How much RAM have you got in
your system and how fast is it? How fast are your hard drive(s)?

Laurence Payne

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Feb 18, 2008, 5:58:31 AM2/18/08
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On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:43:04 -0500, "Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote:

>Faster than with my Pentium D 940, but not as fast as I expected it to be
>for a Q6600. A mixdown that took aout 1:30, now takes about 1 minute. I
>was thinking this was going to dramatically drop, not just a little.
>
>Is there anything I can check (my processor scheduling is set to "background
>services"), that's the only thing I can think of.

I wonder if the mixdown process is threaded in such a way that it
knows or cares how many cores are available? If it's only using one
processor, how much faster is THAT core than the CPU you were
previously using? (Though that's unfair, I believe the new processors
are more efficient in other ways).

Steve

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Feb 18, 2008, 8:35:50 AM2/18/08
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Nick;

Ok, I was just wondering why Cubase 3 wasn't using at least 50% of my CPU
overhead during mixdown. Seems strange to me. I am running 2gb DDR2 800
RAM. My HD's are 80 (OS), 250 and 320 (Storage) SATA 2, 7200RPM.

Would an upgrade to Cubase 4 help or is it not worth the hassles everyone is
reporting? I was also considering a change to XP x64 and Sonar 7. Just
wondering where I would see the biggest performance increase.

Thanks for the info;
Steve

"nickm" <ni...@nospam.net> wrote in message
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Steve

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Feb 18, 2008, 8:37:18 AM2/18/08
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It's definately using all the cores, but during mixdown they are utilized
like 25%, 20%, 15%, 15%.


"Laurence Payne" <NOSPAMlpayne1ATdsl.pipex.com> wrote in message

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Laurence Payne

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Feb 18, 2008, 11:42:38 AM2/18/08
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On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:37:18 -0500, "Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote:

>It's definately using all the cores, but during mixdown they are utilized
>like 25%, 20%, 15%, 15%.

Looks as if you've got processor power to spare then. If anything's
holding you up, that isn't it.

Laurence Payne

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Feb 18, 2008, 11:47:11 AM2/18/08
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On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:35:50 -0500, "Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote:

>Ok, I was just wondering why Cubase 3 wasn't using at least 50% of my CPU
>overhead during mixdown. Seems strange to me. I am running 2gb DDR2 800
>RAM. My HD's are 80 (OS), 250 and 320 (Storage) SATA 2, 7200RPM.
>
>Would an upgrade to Cubase 4 help or is it not worth the hassles everyone is
>reporting? I was also considering a change to XP x64 and Sonar 7. Just
>wondering where I would see the biggest performance increase.

There's no big hassles with Cubase 4. A few small ones, as with all
new versions.

Where do you NEED more performance? Are you making so many mixdowns
of long projects that knocking a few seconds off is an issue? Can you
not run all the VSTi and effects you want? Do you prefer Sonar's
features to Cubase's? Are there 64-bit drivers for all your hardware?
Do you feel a 64-bit system would be inherently faster?

Steve

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Feb 18, 2008, 12:28:09 PM2/18/08
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I would like better performance during mixdowns, and yes, when I am making
changes I usually mixdown the changes to send different versions to the
bands that I work with to see which one they like better. SOmtimes this can
equate to 10 files per song per album. I prefer Cubase's interface and with
my questions I was wondering:

1. Will switching to Sonar 64 and XP x64 give me any improvement in this
area (mixdown performance).
2. Has there been any improvements made to Cubase 4 to make better use of
my processor during mixdowns as opposed to keeping with SX3?
3. TO answer your last question - Yes my interfaces have 64-bit drivers for
oth XP and Vista.

Upgrading my processor made me think (per reading CPU reviews, etc.) that a
Q6600 would more than double my CPU performance over the Pentium D 940. I
am just concerned I am not seeing that in Cubase.

Thanks;
Steve


I don't use Vsti's, just VST Effect plugins.


"Laurence Payne" <NOSPAMlpayne1ATdsl.pipex.com> wrote in message

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Laurence Payne

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Feb 18, 2008, 1:09:21 PM2/18/08
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>Upgrading my processor made me think (per reading CPU reviews, etc.) that a
>Q6600 would more than double my CPU performance over the Pentium D 940. I
>am just concerned I am not seeing that in Cubase.

It seems that CPU speed is not the limiting factor in this process,
doesn't it? You're in danger of spending a lot of money and seeing
only minimal performance gain I'm afraid.

nickm

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Feb 19, 2008, 4:07:54 AM2/19/08
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"Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote in message
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> Nick;
>
> Ok, I was just wondering why Cubase 3 wasn't using at least 50% of my CPU
> overhead during mixdown. Seems strange to me. I am running 2gb DDR2 800
> RAM. My HD's are 80 (OS), 250 and 320 (Storage) SATA 2, 7200RPM.
>
> Would an upgrade to Cubase 4 help or is it not worth the hassles everyone
> is reporting? I was also considering a change to XP x64 and Sonar 7.
> Just wondering where I would see the biggest performance increase.
>
> Thanks for the info;
> Steve
>
Steve

As Laurence says, your CPU isn't causing you problems as there's plenty of
overhead left. The bottlenecks are more liley to be elsewhere in your
system.

As it happens, I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit on one of my
machines and have done since January last year (I work in IT and wanted to
become familiar with Vista, didn't see the point of going for Vista Home
Premium or staying 32 bit at the time). I initially had an identical PC
set up with a dual boot of Windows XP 32 bit and Windows Vista 32 bit in
that both machines were kitted out with Intel E6600 dual core CPU's. Both
machines have 4GB RAM @ 800MHz DDR-2 - although the 32 bit machine can only
usefully see about 3.25GB, and both have separate drives for the OS and
data, both SATA-2 at 7200rpm. Both machines use the Asus P5B-E Deluxe
motherboard (I always use Asus or Gigabyte boards) which have the older
Intel P965 chipset. I have a newer board in another machine with the P35
chipset and faster FSB, but this hasn't been fully set up as a music machine
yet so I can't give you any meaningful feedback on performance.

My Vista 64 bit machine was generally a little faster than the 32 bit
machine when running Vista in general, and a whisker slower, but not so
noticeable in practical terms when running Cubase SX 3. Cubase 4 32 bit ran
fine on the 64 bit machine, but was a little slower than on the 32 bit
machine. I now run the 64 bit version of Cubase 4 on the 64 bit machine,
and with the dual core CPU it is noticeably faster than the 32 bit machine.

I swapped the original dual core E6600 CPU out of the 64 bit machine around
last October and replaced it with a quad core Q6600 CPU, and immediately in
most respects, noticed an improvement in speed with Cubase 4, but it has to
be said that some applications seem to run more slowly, and this will be
more about the way those applications respond to multiple cores. The
improvement in Cubase offered by the upgrade to a Q6600 from an E6600 was,
like yours, nowhere near double, and I would say around 30% over the dual
core - however, that's 30% above the E6600 which was a higher starting point
than your original Pentium D. I wouldn't like to hazard an accurate guess as
to what that actually means in real terms, except to say that the
improvement would more than likely have been more than 30% from a Pentium D
to Q6600. Like you I have plenty of CPU headroom spare when running Cubase.

My 64 bit quad core machine is not just a music machine - it's more of a
general workhorse on which I also make a bit of music, whereas the other one
is considered by me to be my main music machine if you like and has been
optimised for music more than the 64 bit computer. In a way, becauise of
the different way in which I use the two machines and what is installed on
each one, there is a small element here of my perhaps comparing apples with
oranges to an extent.

The quad core has made the machine more noisy than it was as a dual core
runs cooler than a quad core and therefore less fan activity is needed. I'm
not totally convinced that my swapping from the dual core CPU to the quad
core has been particularly beneficial to everything I do with this machine
as I find some activities like general Web browsing and general network
access seem (not scientifically tested - it's just a prerception - but borne
out by other the better performance of XP or Vista machines on the same
network) to be perceptibly slower with the quad core CPU - almost as if the
machine can't work out quite which core to use for what sometimes, but that
said, in practical terms, XP is better at networking than Vista in its
current form anyway (let's see what Vista SP1 does to improve matters), and
I think that had I been so inclined, it may have been better to start with a
clean install with the quad core CPU in place from the word go. I think
where the quad core comes into its own is with applications like Cubase 4
that can utilise multiple cores, and in this, I can see a definite
improvement in performance with the Q6600

In both cases, each of my machines has more than enough power to cope with
my demands when running Cubase with plenty to spare. I don't use a lot of
VSTi's, but I do use a reasonable number of FX and other processing tools.
Here the 64 bit machine is definitely more at ease, as I can make the 32 bit
machine start to choke much earlier than I can the 64 bit machine if I load
up enough VST processing tools.

I could put Sonar 7 on to either of my machines, but although it's
undoubtedly good at what it does, I think Cubase is the better product for
me at least - probably more because I've been in from the very beginnings of
Cubase on the PC back to version 1 in 1993 and I've grown up with it . As
Laurence says, there are no major issues with Cubase 4, and in my experience
I haven't really noticed many, if any of the minor ones.

The biggest issue with any 64 bit OS at the moment is still whether hardware
drivers are available or not. I run a MOTU Traveler on the 64 bit machine,
which does have 64 bit drivers, and this was purchased on the basis that
M-Audio haven't yet supported their FW1814 with 64 bit drivers for Vista
meaning I couldn't use the FW1814 with any version of Vista for quite some
time after Vista's release. MOTU's original 64 bit driver has problems with
any 64 bit machines running more than 3.25GB RAM, but the newer beta driver
has resolved this. I have a number of soundcards lying around and it's
quite surprising to see how many of the older discontinued models have
actually been supported with bothe 32 bit and 64 bit drivers and it's hats
off to the likes of Terratec and Edirol who have had Vista drivers available
for interfaces like the EWS88MT and the UA-20 respectively since pretty much
day one.

In your shoes, I wouldn't even contemplate XP64 as it is quite poorly
supported in comparison to XP 32 bit, and as a 64 bit OS, I can't see it
getting any more development time thrown at it. As I understand it, XP 64
won't get the upcoming SP3 release. I'm not sure I would fully recommend
Windows Vista 64 bit to you either, or at least without reservation, and
that's not because it isn't a better OS in my opinion than Vista 32 - it is
definitely better in most respects - at a cost - and the most stable Windows
OS yet in my experience, but because of the potential hardware driver issues
and other software you might have that may not run as expected. Most, but
not all applications appear to run normally in the 64 bit environment.
Older versions of Wavelab can be problematic though. How much better Vista
64 bit is than a well set up XP 32 bit machine is debatable, particularly
when you factor in the hardware resources needed to run Vista effectively in
comparison to XP - but that said, over the last 18 months or so, even
general office based XP machines that were relatively happy with 256MB of
RAM, now demand 512MB as a minimum.

In chasing the ultimate dream of PC performance I have learned that
expectations fuelled by magazine reviews including tests in laboratory
conditions are rarely met in the real world, although many real world
experiences can come quite close. At the end of the day, an application
like Cubase will use what resources it needs and not necessarily everything
that's available to it - as we've seen! A faster FSB and faster memory
modules is probably where you'd see the biggest performance gain. To
achieve cutting edge performance you need cutting edge technology, and you
need considerable cutting edge funds to have a cutting edge system for a day
or two. In short, cutting edge is an impossible dream for most of us.

To eke a little more speed out of your system, and whether the results would
be worth the not inconsiderable financial outlay is another question, you'd
almost certainly benefit most from replacing your existing motherboard to
one that supports a higher FSB - keep it Intel in my experience for
stability , and then throwing 4GB of the fastest CAS level RAM you can find
into it. Then for your working audio drives, a couple of 10000rpm Raptors.
A decent PCI-e graphics card with around 256MB of fast memory should be more
than enough. This won't be cheap, and I think you'd still be disappointed
with the return. Additionally, turn off the machine's ability to
dynamically control the speed of the CPU (SpeedStep) in the BIOS, as you may
find that your CPU could be running at about 1.6GHz instead of 2.4GHz *if*
the motherboard and OS consider it to be idling - and although somewhat
surprisingly, given the *right* conditions, this decrease in CPU speed *can*
happen sometimes, albeit relatively rarely, even when running an
application. I find it better not to give the machine that as an option.

For an OS in a new build, I'd say that Vista 64 is probably your best choice
in terms of stability and future proofing - with the caveat that your chosen
software needs to be multiple CPU core aware and available as a native 64
bit application - candidates being Cubase 4 and Sonar 7, and; that your
audio hardware is properly supported with 64 bit drivers. That said, most
commercial audio PC builders still recommend XP 32 bit as the OS of choice
and with good commercial reasoning behind it.

Depending on how the figures are interpreted, Vista is widely reported to
have had relatively luke-warm take-up by users because XP is good enough at
what it does with less resources and in general customers have greater trust
in XP because it's been around for so long and is generally regarded as the
best OS Microsoft have developed so far. I tend to agree that Vista is not
that big a step-up from XP to make users want to rush out and invest, and
that the WOW factor is little more than a marketing ploy. Many people have
compared the gap between XP and Vista to the gap between Windows 98 and
Millennium (a truly awful OS) which isn't a fair comparison at all.
People's expectations of Vista fuelled by years of hype haven't been
fulfilled in general. Had I not been involved in IT anyway, I would have
probably held off from getting involved with Vista when I did, although had
I needed a new laptop, I would have found it relatively hard to get one with
XP Pro installed had I relied on the likes of PC World :-/.

Personally, I think I'd be more than happy in terms of a 'production'
machine with what you have already in that it works pretty well, and if
you've read the current Sound-on-Sound PC Notes section by Martin Walker,
you'll know he's highlighted the fact that in music technology circles, the
perpetual music computer upgrade cycle is slowing, simply because the
hardware that's now available has outstripped the needs of most audio
production software and that any performance gains are relatively small.
Add to this the fact that the market is totally saturated with PC's that
still operate well enough for the tasks they were bought for. He reckons
that, by a rule of thumb he came up with some time ago, users were on
average replacing their music making PC's about once every two years, and
now that has become about once every three years. I'd say that figure is
about right.

I can say that in my personal experience, getting too bogged down in
computer performance issues, when it's not really an issue is totally
counter productive in terms of music making and is a real creativity killer
:-) I'd advise anyone to not bother fixing something if it ain't broke -
although I'd find it hard to accept this advice myself ;-)

Apologies for the long post. I don't know if any of what I've said will be
of any practical use to you, but hopefully it will make some sense.

Nick

Steve

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Feb 19, 2008, 9:29:53 PM2/19/08
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Nick;

No need to apologize for the length. This has to be one of the most
informative responses I have received on usenet. Thanks for taking the time
to write such detail.

I too work in IT but more on the industrial software side of things. Much
like the computer music world, industrial IT applications have been happily
running on older hardware (P3/4's) and OS's (Win2k) without complaint so I
am left with reading magazine articles and opinion on new hardware which is
typically geared toward gamers. I have to say that my new upgrade has come
a long way in terms of stability than my Petium D 940/ASUS P5P800 SE system
but again as you pointed out nowhere near the expected performance levels
one would be led to believe. The stability alone was worth the upgrade. My
old P5P800 SE had the occasional PCI bus issue, but was Resolved when I
would turn off the LAN adapater, and turn the graphics card ardware
acceleration all the way down. This doesn't seem to be the case with the
ASUS P5K. I disabled all the on board hardware i didn't need, installed XP,
sound drivers and Cubase and I was up and running. I was using two seperate
computers (one for tracking one for mixing) but now with the stability of
this new system I think it's time to ditch my tracking computer (a P41.8)
and do everything on the Q6600. I am using a Tascam 1804 for tracking and a
Presonus Firebox for mixing. Both have drivers for Vista 64 but I don't
think I am quite ready to make that plunge yet. I am very cautious with M$
and it's new operating systems pre-SP2. You do have me tempted to go the
Vista 64/Cubase 4-64 route. I will hold off but it's nice to know my
hardware is capable when I am ready.

Cheers;
Steve

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nickm

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Feb 20, 2008, 3:08:19 AM2/20/08
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"Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote in message
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Steve

I think from what you've said that, the kit you have is pretty well up there
already. Funnily enough the board I mentioned in the machine that I haven't
configured for music is the same one as yours - the Asus P5K and I bought
the Q6600 at the same time. I swapped the CPU from that into the 64bit
machine which runs the P5B-E-Deluxe and subsequently has a lower FSB in
terms of memory speed. In the P5K I have 2GB of faster RAM (OCZ Reaper
PC-8500 - 1066MHz), so what I should really do is to put the Q6600 back in
that box and try it with Vista 64 - if I have the time that is :-)

I remember all that mucking about you mention with having to remove
conflicting PCI cards, and then juggling them to make everything work
properly. It was all down to IRQ sharing and you'd usually find that PCI
slot 1 shared its IRQ with the AGP graphics slot and then PCI slots 2 and 5
might share an IRQ with each other or possibly with a hard wired device such
as on-board sound or network adapter. Asus and Gigabyte boards as well as
MSI used to behave pretty well on the whole. Thank goodness all that is
mostly a thing of the past :-)

I think that possibly the only areas that you could improve on without
spending a huge sum of money is memory and possibly a 10000rpm SATA 2 drive
(Raptor - and expensive in comparison to other slower drives per GB) for
your working rather than archiving data drive. Your current RAM is PC-6400
DDR2 (800MHz) and the board is capable of supporting 1066MHz DDR-2 RAM (or
possibly DDR3 if you bought the DDR3 version of the P5K series board). You
*could* do this for less than £100 GBP for 2GB (with a 32 bit OS it's
probably not worth going for 4GB as the OS will only see about 3.25GB). You
will see a noticeable improvement in performance by doing this, but how much
I wouldn't like to say, and whether the performance increase you would see
is worth the outlay is where you'd need to make a decision. Working in IT
as you do, you are fully aware of the hype and 'kid-ology' that hardware and
software producers employ to make users salivate to the point where they
have to rush out and buy the latest and apparently greatest bits and bobs.
I must admit to falling into their trap occasionally :-/ Nowadays, I like
to keep a pretty decent well specified system for my musical dalliances, but
I never go for the actual cutting edge stuff, as I'm not a gamer. Stability
is what it's all about really with a music machine. Cubase has always had a
knack of managing to find areas of weakness such as a slightly out of whack
memory module (such as those cheaper ones that seemed to turn up at computer
fairs) whereas 'ordinary' applications like MS Word would be fine. In my
experience as far as hardware is concerned (meaning: excluding user errors
and malware) dodgy memory is the main culprit for instability in a machine,
with failing PSU's and sometimes dodgy capacitors on the motherboard being
to blame. For this reason I usually, but not always opt for a well known
brand of memory with a lifetime guarantee and support such as Crucial or
Corsair, and I always opt for well known board manufacturers. I almost
exclusively opt these days for boards that support Intel CPU's with an Intel
chipset rather than Via or SiS, and rather than any AMD based board. I have
built many machines with AMD CPU's over the years, and once they were
working and stable, they were good in general, if a little hot running, but
there were often times when getting an AMD system to that point took far
longer because of all the trial and error tweaks than an equivalent Intel
based system would. Intel systems generally work as-is without hassle upon
assembly and installation. That may also be true of current AMD systems.

I still have several Pentium 4 machines around that I use for loaning to my
clients occasionally ranging from 2.4GHz - 2.8GHz - 3.0 GHz - 3.2 GHz. The
better of these run on a Gigabyte GA8-KNXP-Ultra (3.0GHz) and an Asus
P4P-800-E-Deluxe (3.2GHz) and I have to say with 2 GB DDR-400 RAM in both,
that the performance of both with the Gigabyte being somewhere just over
four years old and the Asus being about 3 years old, is still acceptable to
good with Cubase SX 3 and XP SP2.

I can say that my experience with Vista 64 bit in terms of stability has
been generally excellent apart from general Vista gripes I have, like: why
pull the rug from under experienced users by apparently renaming old and
familiar items such as Add-Remove programs in the Control Panel? User
Account Control - a real pain in the rear, Windows Aero interface??? ...
what's the point??? etc... etc... DRM can be a problem if you want to burn
a CD of an original track you've just created in Cubase using Windows Media
Player (it tells you you don't have the rights to write it to CD), but there
are plenty of ways around it. Like previous Windows OS's, you can remove
most of the nonsense and revert to Classic mode though. It has been 100%
stable - no blue screens, no crashes, no spontaneous restarts. This is also
pretty true of the Vista 32 bit machines I have built, but I have
experienced issues when upgrading a couple of laptops bought between
November 06 and March 07 to Vista Business from XP Pro through the 'free'
(you had to pay something like £16 GBP for the media to be posted out -
usually several months after making the application to Microsoft) upgrade
program offered by Microsoft. the difference between Vista 64 bit and Vista
32 bit systems is that Vista 64 insists on signed hardware drivers (although
there is a way around it for testing purposes), whereas Vista 32 will still
allow unsigned drivers to be installed. This can make a very real
difference to a user's experience. Some users have forced XP drivers into
Vista systems and have then complained about Vista when they've started to
get problems, so whilst the policy regarding drivers in Vista 64 is very
rigid, I would say that it's a good policy. What is frustrating is the
incredibly slow development of Vista drivers by some well known audio
interface manufacturers. Vista has been in development for a very long
time - the longest for any Microsoft OS - and beta versions were around for
a very long time before the final release. Quite frankly I am astounded
that some of these third party manufacturers weren't at all prepared for
such a major OS release. It's been well over a year now since Vista was
released to manufacturers and just over a year since it was made available
to ordinary users, and I still can't use my M-Audio Firewire FW1814
interface with Vista 64. It took M-Audio over 6 months to come up with a
Vista 32 bit driver. I can see where these manufacturers are coming from -
the user base for 32bit OS's is far larger than the 64 bit user base and
it's all about satisfying the areas of greater need first, but in general,
the lack of development of 64 bit audio drivers is, in my opinion, one of,
if not THE major cause(s) holding back the development of 64bit music
production systems. 64bit unfortunately isn't yet mainstream enough to
warrant the attention of some manufacturers.

Anyway - enough 'geek' talk for now :-)

Nick

Laurence Payne

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Feb 20, 2008, 6:36:12 AM2/20/08
to
On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:29:53 -0500, "Steve" <m...@you.com> wrote:

>I was using two seperate
>computers (one for tracking one for mixing)

Was this because you always recorded the maximum number of tracks in
Cubase that the computer would handle, making it impossible to create
just ONE more (the mix)? Or because you had a miscomprehension that
mixdown should be to a separate program, like 16-track analogue mixing
to a 2-track machine? Anything you feed to the input of such a
program, or to another computer, could of course just as easily be fed
to the Record Input of Cubase.

Steve-o

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Feb 20, 2008, 8:45:10 PM2/20/08
to
Laurence;

I was using my higer performance machine to mix (an I also used it for other
purposes like video editing, DVD burling etc, so it wasn't a dedicated
machine). The lower end machine (P41.8, 1GB RAM) was dedicated for tracking
only. The lower end machine seemed to be more stable at multitracking since
it was pretty plain (XP, Sound Drivers, Cubase only, no internet
connection). My higher end machine gave the occasional data drop out in the
audio so I set up a dedicated machine.

Steve


"Laurence Payne" <NOSPAMlpayne1ATdsl.pipex.com> wrote in message

news:5r3or3poeokq5k9s7...@4ax.com...

Steve-o

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Feb 20, 2008, 8:56:12 PM2/20/08
to
Nick;

I went down to the computer shop and exchanged my 2 GB of DDR2-800 for 2 GB
of DDR2 1066. It did make a difference. Mixdown is a bit faster and
monitoring my 4 cores I am getting about 35-43% usage on all 4 cores. Must
have been my mem speed holding everything back.

Thanks for the help!

Steve
"nickm" <ni...@nospam.net> wrote in message

news:47bbdff3$0$2450$fa0f...@news.zen.co.uk...

nickm

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Feb 22, 2008, 1:18:50 AM2/22/08
to

"Steve-o" <m...@you.com> wrote in message
news:PS4vj.22024$612....@read1.cgocable.net...

> Nick;
>
> I went down to the computer shop and exchanged my 2 GB of DDR2-800 for 2
> GB of DDR2 1066. It did make a difference. Mixdown is a bit faster and
> monitoring my 4 cores I am getting about 35-43% usage on all 4 cores.
> Must have been my mem speed holding everything back.
>
> Thanks for the help!
>
> Steve

Result!!! Well done :-)

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