[Larry Fine]

Need some advice and knowledge:

I have Nuendo 3 on a Pentium 4 3.4ghz Northwood, 2 gb ram, RME card
pci, Win XP.

1. Should I get with 4 gb ram - -
INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 2.4GHZ for $272 or
INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6850 3.0GHZ for $273?

2. How many more plugins should I be able to get with one of the
above?

3. Isn't there some type of multi-core bug with daws right now?

4. For an application that can only use one core at 2.4ghz or 3.0ghz,
wouldn't it run slower than my 3.4ghz right now?

5. When was the last Intel price drop and when is the next one
expected?

6. How is Nuendo on Vista?

Thanks to anyone who can offer advice!

[Peter A. Stoll[_2_]]

Larry Fine wrote in
:

Need some advice and knowledge:

I have Nuendo 3 on a Pentium 4 3.4ghz Northwood, 2 gb ram, RME card
pci, Win XP.

1. Should I get with 4 gb ram - -
INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 2.4GHZ for $272 or
INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6850 3.0GHZ for $273?

2. How many more plugins should I be able to get with one of the
above?

3. Isn't there some type of multi-core bug with daws right now?

4. For an application that can only use one core at 2.4ghz or 3.0ghz,
wouldn't it run slower than my 3.4ghz right now?

5. When was the last Intel price drop and when is the next one
expected?

6. How is Nuendo on Vista?

Thanks to anyone who can offer advice!

I'm a retired career microprocessor guy who dabbles in audio. I'll take
a swing at some of your questions, but not any of the DAW-specific parts.

As it happens, I recently replaced a system with a 3.2 GHz Gallatin (the
Northwood's large-cache very close descendant) 2Gbytes with a Q6600
4Gbytes, which I currently lightly overclock at 3.0 GHz).

1. Of your two choices, depending on operating voltage and activity, the
Q6600 will probably burn somewhat more power, and, with equal cooling
solutions, run hotter, or require a higher fan speeds (thus a bit more
noise). But not to a degree which will shock you, given the one you have
been running. In fact, if you run the Q6600 at stock speed and voltage,
I think it may burn less power than your Northwood.

The Q6600 option will give substantially higher total compute capacity
than the E6850, but you won't benefit unless you run applications whose
time-critical functions (the ones you care about) are appropriately
multi-threaded. My guess is that they are not, in which case the E6850
will be a little faster for you in most tasks where you notice. The
Q6600 may sometimes "feel" faster, as there seem to be task-switching
advantages to having extra processors around. This should not be true,
but given problems with both Microsoft and much application code, I think
it is to some degree.

4. The Core 2 architecture gets _much_ more work done per clock cycle
than the Willamette family of designs, of which your Northwood is one.
Either of your two choices will run any application substantially faster
than your Northwood, given the mentioned clock rates. If you have been
operating the Northwood with hyperthreading turned on, the improvement
will be even more dramatic.

5. The Q6600 had a huge price drop July 22 (almost a factor of two). (I
bought mine the day after the drop). Intel price cuts tend to come
quarterly, but are not even slightly uniform across the product line. I
suspect this one was partly intended to build up the use of quad core
processors in the mainstream--not just extreme gamers and bleeding edge
spendthrifts. In the Penryn generation, quad cores are expected to be
fairly routine--and lower power.

While not the answer to your DAW questions, I'll point out that my 2
Gbyte to 4 Gbyte (really 3.5--32-bit XP limitation) RAM increase in this
change had major beneficial effect in my use of Sound Forge. The reason
is that far more of my processing worked from the RAM disk cache rather
than actually going to disk. Actually, the more correct way to say it is
that the size audio file for which intermediate operations worked out of
cache increased substantially. Depending on your applications and the
size chunks you work in, you may see a benefit there as well.

[Laurence Payne]

On Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:07:46 -0500, "Peter A. Stoll"
wrote:

Larry Fine wrote in
:

Need some advice and knowledge:

I have Nuendo 3 on a Pentium 4 3.4ghz Northwood, 2 gb ram, RME card
pci, Win XP.

1. Should I get with 4 gb ram - -
INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 2.4GHZ for $272 or
INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6850 3.0GHZ for $273?

2. How many more plugins should I be able to get with one of the
above?

3. Isn't there some type of multi-core bug with daws right now?

4. For an application that can only use one core at 2.4ghz or 3.0ghz,
wouldn't it run slower than my 3.4ghz right now?

5. When was the last Intel price drop and when is the next one
expected?

6. How is Nuendo on Vista?

Thanks to anyone who can offer advice!

I'm a retired career microprocessor guy who dabbles in audio. I'll take
a swing at some of your questions, but not any of the DAW-specific parts.

As it happens, I recently replaced a system with a 3.2 GHz Gallatin (the
Northwood's large-cache very close descendant) 2Gbytes with a Q6600
4Gbytes, which I currently lightly overclock at 3.0 GHz).

1. Of your two choices, depending on operating voltage and activity, the
Q6600 will probably burn somewhat more power, and, with equal cooling
solutions, run hotter, or require a higher fan speeds (thus a bit more
noise). But not to a degree which will shock you, given the one you have
been running. In fact, if you run the Q6600 at stock speed and voltage,
I think it may burn less power than your Northwood.

The Q6600 option will give substantially higher total compute capacity
than the E6850, but you won't benefit unless you run applications whose
time-critical functions (the ones you care about) are appropriately
multi-threaded. My guess is that they are not, in which case the E6850
will be a little faster for you in most tasks where you notice. The
Q6600 may sometimes "feel" faster, as there seem to be task-switching
advantages to having extra processors around. This should not be true,
but given problems with both Microsoft and much application code, I think
it is to some degree.

4. The Core 2 architecture gets _much_ more work done per clock cycle
than the Willamette family of designs, of which your Northwood is one.
Either of your two choices will run any application substantially faster
than your Northwood, given the mentioned clock rates. If you have been
operating the Northwood with hyperthreading turned on, the improvement
will be even more dramatic.

5. The Q6600 had a huge price drop July 22 (almost a factor of two). (I
bought mine the day after the drop). Intel price cuts tend to come
quarterly, but are not even slightly uniform across the product line. I
suspect this one was partly intended to build up the use of quad core
processors in the mainstream--not just extreme gamers and bleeding edge
spendthrifts. In the Penryn generation, quad cores are expected to be
fairly routine--and lower power.

While not the answer to your DAW questions, I'll point out that my 2
Gbyte to 4 Gbyte (really 3.5--32-bit XP limitation) RAM increase in this
change had major beneficial effect in my use of Sound Forge. The reason
is that far more of my processing worked from the RAM disk cache rather
than actually going to disk. Actually, the more correct way to say it is
that the size audio file for which intermediate operations worked out of
cache increased substantially. Depending on your applications and the
size chunks you work in, you may see a benefit there as well.


This all seems good advice. The last bit is, of course, applicable
to offline processing but not to the sort of "real-time" processing
that we normally perceive as power when running a DAW.

I can confirm that I am successfully running Cubase 4 on a Q6700-based
DAW (2.6GHz overclocked to 3GHz).

[Julien BH]

On Oct 5, 1:07 am, "Peter A. Stoll"
wrote:
Larry Fine wrote :



Need some advice and knowledge:

I have Nuendo 3 on a Pentium 4 3.4ghz Northwood, 2 gb ram, RME card
pci, Win XP.

1. Should I get with 4 gb ram - -
INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 2.4GHZ for $272 or
INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6850 3.0GHZ for $273?

2. How many more plugins should I be able to get with one of the
above?

3. Isn't there some type of multi-core bug with daws right now?

4. For an application that can only use one core at 2.4ghz or 3.0ghz,
wouldn't it run slower than my 3.4ghz right now?

5. When was the last Intel price drop and when is the next one
expected?

6. How is Nuendo on Vista?

Thanks to anyone who can offer advice!

I'm a retired career microprocessor guy who dabbles in audio. I'll take
a swing at some of your questions, but not any of the DAW-specific parts.

As it happens, I recently replaced a system with a 3.2 GHz Gallatin (the
Northwood's large-cache very close descendant) 2Gbytes with a Q6600
4Gbytes, which I currently lightly overclock at 3.0 GHz).

1. Of your two choices, depending on operating voltage and activity, the
Q6600 will probably burn somewhat more power, and, with equal cooling
solutions, run hotter, or require a higher fan speeds (thus a bit more
noise). But not to a degree which will shock you, given the one you have
been running. In fact, if you run the Q6600 at stock speed and voltage,
I think it may burn less power than your Northwood.

The Q6600 option will give substantially higher total compute capacity
than the E6850, but you won't benefit unless you run applications whose
time-critical functions (the ones you care about) are appropriately
multi-threaded. My guess is that they are not, in which case the E6850
will be a little faster for you in most tasks where you notice. The
Q6600 may sometimes "feel" faster, as there seem to be task-switching
advantages to having extra processors around. This should not be true,
but given problems with both Microsoft and much application code, I think
it is to some degree.

4. The Core 2 architecture gets _much_ more work done per clock cycle
than the Willamette family of designs, of which your Northwood is one.
Either of your two choices will run any application substantially faster
than your Northwood, given the mentioned clock rates. If you have been
operating the Northwood with hyperthreading turned on, the improvement
will be even more dramatic.

Wait a minute... HT is BETTER than Non-HT, not the other way around.

5. The Q6600 had a huge price drop July 22 (almost a factor of two). (I
bought mine the day after the drop). Intel price cuts tend to come
quarterly, but are not even slightly uniform across the product line. I
suspect this one was partly intended to build up the use of quad core
processors in the mainstream--not just extreme gamers and bleeding edge
spendthrifts. In the Penryn generation, quad cores are expected to be
fairly routine--and lower power.

While not the answer to your DAW questions, I'll point out that my 2
Gbyte to 4 Gbyte (really 3.5--32-bit XP limitation) RAM increase in this
change had major beneficial effect in my use of Sound Forge. The reason
is that far more of my processing worked from the RAM disk cache rather
than actually going to disk. Actually, the more correct way to say it is
that the size audio file for which intermediate operations worked out of
cache increased substantially. Depending on your applications and the
size chunks you work in, you may see a benefit there as well.

More than 2GB is considered overkill for now, but in 2 years that will
not be the case. So if you're planning to keep your computer for a
long time, think ahead.
Same thing for the Quad core. Even though for now there are not much
application (if any) needing 4 cores, there will be in the future for
sure.

[Tobiah]

While not the answer to your DAW questions, I'll point out that my 2
Gbyte to 4 Gbyte (really 3.5--32-bit XP limitation) RAM increase in this
change had major beneficial effect in my use of Sound Forge. The reason
is that far more of my processing worked from the RAM disk cache rather
than actually going to disk. Actually, the more correct way to say it is
that the size audio file for which intermediate operations worked out of
cache increased substantially. Depending on your applications and the
size chunks you work in, you may see a benefit there as well.

More than 2GB is considered overkill for now, but in 2 years that will
not be the case. So if you're planning to keep your computer for a
long time, think ahead.
Same thing for the Quad core. Even though for now there are not much
application (if any) needing 4 cores, there will be in the future for
sure.


Overkill perhaps, for a Secretary running Word, but there are many
benefits to having gobs of ram. The Sound Forge example is one.
A good OS should also be caching every disk read into all available
ram. When accessing cached data on a machine with many gigs of ram
the speed increase can be eerie. This could have positive effects
on multi-track recording programs.

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

[David Grant]

"Tobiah" wrote in message
.. .

While not the answer to your DAW questions, I'll point out that my 2
Gbyte to 4 Gbyte (really 3.5--32-bit XP limitation) RAM increase in this
change had major beneficial effect in my use of Sound Forge. The reason
is that far more of my processing worked from the RAM disk cache rather
than actually going to disk. Actually, the more correct way to say it
is
that the size audio file for which intermediate operations worked out of
cache increased substantially. Depending on your applications and the
size chunks you work in, you may see a benefit there as well.

More than 2GB is considered overkill for now, but in 2 years that will
not be the case. So if you're planning to keep your computer for a
long time, think ahead.
Same thing for the Quad core. Even though for now there are not much
application (if any) needing 4 cores, there will be in the future for
sure.


Overkill perhaps, for a Secretary running Word, but there are many
benefits to having gobs of ram. The Sound Forge example is one.
A good OS should also be caching every disk read into all available
ram. When accessing cached data on a machine with many gigs of ram
the speed increase can be eerie. This could have positive effects
on multi-track recording programs.


For pure recording purposes my pagefile + ram useage never approaches 2GB.
Since that's how much RAM i have I could probably disable the page file and
still have plenty leftover.

For BFD or other VSTi's with large samples, I'd love to have 4, or 8 even.




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

[Jason]

In article , REMOVE_MEjmd_
says...



For pure recording purposes my pagefile + ram useage never approaches 2GB.
Since that's how much RAM i have I could probably disable the page file and
still have plenty leftover.

Ditching paging on a realtime system with sufficent memory is a great
idea. I have 3GB of ram and multiple boot setups, one of which dispenses
with virtual memory just for realtime audio work. I've never come close
to running out of storage. With huge paging files and disk caches, you
sometimes hit a situation where the opsys decides it's time to
reorganize storage and can seriously clog up the realtime work while it
does so.

For BFD or other VSTi's with large samples, I'd love to have 4, or 8 even.
My wife uses the Garritan Personal Orchestra sample library with her
midi compositions in Finale - it barely works at all with less than 1GB
of memory, but it really flies with 3GB.

Jason
--
reverse my name in email address

[TCR]

On 5 Oct, 05:37, Larry Fine wrote:

3. Isn't there some type of multi-core bug with daws right now?

Hi,

Cubase 4 supports multi-threading if you make sure multi-processing is
checked in the Device Setup dialog.

I run it with two dual core AMD Opterons, and it uses all four cores.

I've noticed no instability that I would put down to the multi-
threading, as opposed to general Steinberg coding.
:-)

If you're going to use many unfrozen VSTi's simultaneously, it would
be advisable to get as much RAM in there as you can fit.

Tim