Laptop buying guide

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 6:54 pm

Well, the laptop has arrived and I've done a little testing and so far it works. Though I'm not getting any better performace PCI bus-wise than with the older Gateway machine.
My guess is that it's more of a PCMCIA architectural limitation thing than a quality of parts issue (though quality of parts has already proven to be a problem so keep your eyes peeled.

At 32Bit-64 ASIO drivers I can get about 28 tracks before a PCI overflow, and once I've hit that limit I can load about 2-3 Masterverbs. Beyond those limitations I can load out my 21 DSPs no problem. The native aspect has much more impressive results. The 1.4gHz Centrino is a smoker and the CPU is replacable. The 15.4 wide-aspect kicks ass and the 128MBs of Video RAM makes a huge difference. Fader movement is really quick and responsive, more testing this weekend.

Also the high resolution (I think 1920x1400) is so slick it's indescribable. Take your mixer, display 24 channels wide and put it next to the router window and you've hit the width of your desktop.

More later,
Sam

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 7:31 pm

Thats nice news Sam... I don't think you'll really find that PCI capacity is a problem in real-world use (let's face it, loading lots of verbs is not exactly 'real-world use'). Perhaps you could try the test with only the Scope card in the system?

It would be very interesting to know what latency you can get down to as well.

peace

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Sat Aug 30, 2003 1:00 pm

No, you're right of course... but I very much enjoyed the ability of stringing endless audio tracks on top of each other. I'll probably have to do some submixing in SX, use group channels, etc. Maybe not though... I haven't really gotten used to being able to scale up to 21 DSPs... might not need more than a few recorded tracks. I barely use more than 3 or 4 VST anythings.

More later,

Sam

Grizzly · Post by **Grizzly** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 1:19 pm

Cool so the system works! What are the specs that you ordered so I know what to get when I order. Is this the notebook with the Pentium M processor? Also do I get the Magma 32 bit/33mhz cardbus to PCI expansion? The one for $895? Also where did you buy this? I need lots of help cause I'm new at this!

Thank you!!!!!!

edit....Oh yeah, so what mememory did you get and what HD? And are any of those speaker systems worth getting for monitoring? What do you use for monitoring? I went under "Higher Education" to get the quotes. Should I use "Small Business" next time?

Thanks very much again!!!1

[ This Message was edited by: Grizzly on 2003-09-02 14:58 ]

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 2:07 pm

Grizzly - yes, the laptop he speaks of is a pentium M.

And yes, it is the 32bit/33mhz Magma that you should go for.

You should maybe try checking out ebay for a Magma... I've seen some go for frighteningly low prices there.

peace

Grizzly · Post by **Grizzly** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 2:51 pm

Yo dehuszar, if you could get back to me with your system specs asap I'd appreciate it since I can order under "Small Business" and get a rebate which runs out tomorrow the 3rd. I can order 256mb memory and get an upgrade to 512mb free! Also should I get the faster 60gb 7200rpm boot drive?

Thanks from a noob.

Grizzly

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 3:21 pm

I would say *definitely* go for the faster HD.. it makes a huge difference.

Also, I would suggest going for 768mb or ideally 1gb of RAM. If you're going for 512mb, try and get 1x512mb chip - if you get 2x 256mb, you will have to get rid of one or both if you want to upgrade, as laptops only have 2 memory slots.

peace

[ This Message was edited by: dArKr3zIn on 2003-09-02 16:25 ]

Grizzly · Post by **Grizzly** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 10:19 pm

Cool thanks a lot!

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 11:00 pm

Well, I had 1GB of RAM that I purchased through a friend of mine who had (emphasize the past tense) connections to warehouse prices, so I just picked up the the free upgrade for 256 MB on 1 DIMM and gave it to me mum for her HP craptop.

As for the processor, I picked up the 1.4gHz chip. I am assured by Dell that the processor is not welded to the board, so technically I should be able to upgrade should I want to do so. Though I haven't had the sack to crack this beauty open and see for myself so DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT!!!!!!!!!!!! Buy whatever processor seems to fit your needs. Having said that, the 1.4 chip smokes. I think the difference in price between chips would be better spent in memory. No swap file kicks ass.

I also picked up the 7200 rpm drive, however, I think I may be bottleneck'd by the PCMCIA bus as I can't really get more than 28-30 tracks of ASIO/STS-x000 channels.

Now it's really important to emphasize that I'm not fully up and running yet. The Creamware equipment just works where other laptops did not. I still have some instabilities in Cubase SX which may be related to the M60s ability to handle the data that the Magma is passing to it. So just know that before you drop any cash, I can't say that I'm REALLY up and running yet. I've just crossed what I think is the major hurdle.

I am now in the process of formatting over Dell's XP installation and building it from the ground up tweaked for audio.

For all you with money burning holes in your wallet, I'd wait until I've finished that and got some testing done at that point before you flex your credit cards.

Besides, a little bit of hot-pocket is a good feeling.

Hope that helps. I'll report more when I have it. Work has picked up dramatically and I've been "dating"

this girl a few cities out so I'm now getting studio work done at 11:00pm on a Tuesday night. If it takes a couple of days before I next ring in, don't lose hope.

Sam

Neutron · Post by **Neutron** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 12:03 am

just in case people are wondering what a pentium "m" is it is more or less a really souped up tualatin type thing, sort of a cross between a p3 and a p4, with new p4 features that do not use too much more battery power (quad pumped bus, instruction cache etc) but a shorter pipeline like a p3

i think if anyone cared to do any comparisons you would find that the pentium "m" scales up like a tualatin would if it could ever reach those clock speeds, and if it had the extra features.

a tualatin 1.2 was roughly eqivelant to a p4 1.5 and a tualatin @ 1.5 (overclock) that i use in my recently ressurected creamware PC is about eqivelant to a p4@ 1.8..if you look at the added features of the pentium"m" and add a few more bomus points for them you can see how it stacks up nicely against a p4 at 500-700 mhz more.

(and 1 meg cache cant be bad for audio apps, they are about the only thing that is written efficiently these days)

they have to be to compete for your CPU cycles.

oh yeah and it has a 1 meg L2 cache

that cant hurt!

[ This Message was edited by: Neutron on 2003-09-04 01:04 ]

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 4:57 am

...And make shure, that there is no "shared memory" grafic-card inside!

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 4:51 pm

Well, the M60 comes with the Geforce Quadro 700 w 128MB of onboard memory, so that won't be too much of an issue.

I can't say I like the image quality as much as I do with an ATI or Matrox, but I played with Morrowind (it's an audio machine, I know.. but I had to) and I damn near soiled myself.

Having a desktop at 1920x1200 is pretty cool too. Lots of space for CubaseSX and SFP to coexist. Oh, and it supports an external monitor, even at higher resolutions.

Also, I've been using my UC-33 and ReMote25 (I'm not too up to speed with these as I have been getting other ducks in a row first, so save questions on those items for another thread) and the fader movements and such are spot on.

My brain can detect that they are not simultaneous, but I can't really see the difference in speed in any quantifiable way. I'd be willing to hazard that it is about as precise as one can get with the latencies involved with midi.

Now if only there was a way to route USB midi into the SFP system and not the other way around... that might really get things realtime.

More when it's available.

Sam

Post by **Guest** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 6:42 pm

On 2003-09-04 17:51, dehuszar wrote:

Now if only there was a way to route USB midi into the SFP system and not the other way around... that might really get things realtime.

More when it's available.

Sam

Hi Sam,

if you use a seq you can route the midi from the USB to SFP and then back

EX: In SX
midi input= usb>output for that channel=Creamware

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 9:57 pm

Paul, now I know why they hired you. (Okay, I knew before, but...

) You are damn useful. Thanks a bundle.

Sam

Grizzly · Post by **Grizzly** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 2:33 pm

So I shouldn't buy yet? What is the problem with SX? since that is my sequencer too! Should I buy and older P3?

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 9:47 pm

It would just crash all the time. Mostly on certain project, but in general there awas instability. Also, my track count wouldn't go higher than 28-30 depending on the rest of the project, and even then, I would have to optimize the project after periodically random PCI overflows. Paul has suggested that something else is trying to access the bus, so I basically decided to wipe the system and start fresh. I'm just installing SFP/Magma drivers now, I should have more info by the end of the weekend.

You can go ahead and buy it if you wish, I just want to be clear that I've not yet had a 100% smooth composing experience yet. I'm not to die-hard on track count and stuff as limitations like that usually lead to more creative solutions, but I can't abide by system crashes when I'm working on stuff. The worst way to kill a song is to have to reboot and try to remember what you wanted to do 7 steps from the one where it failed.

That I won't accept. That's why I hesitate to 100% recommend it until I get more stable results.

You've been warned.

Sam
p.s. I've really grown to love this thing and have faith that I can get it running smoothly, I just don't f*ck around suggesting $3000+ laptops that I haven't gotten working to my satisfaction yet.

Volkmar123 · Post by **Volkmar123** » Wed Sep 10, 2003 7:29 am

So I got a magma cb2, and pulsarI +pulsar XTC card
and do not get to run it, for playing STS Sampler, on newer (centrino) notebooks

I did get a "pci capacity limit reached"
message, way too soon.
(with none of the notebooks I could use all my 10 dsp playing the sampler)

Can you do it ?,using new notebook + windows xp ?

regards
Volkmar

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Wed Sep 10, 2003 8:24 am

can you please specify exactly which notebooks you have tried?

it really helps to know exactly which ones.

peace

Grizzly · Post by **Grizzly** » Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:09 pm

Well it's beginning to look like it's a much better idea getting an older Dell Inspirion 8000/8100 since you know it works with the card. That is of course unless you have any new news.

I also just wrote Creamware support to get a list of suitable laptops that they know work with SFP. Hopefully that will help me.

Volkmar123 · Post by **Volkmar123** » Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:46 pm

OK, Here is more details,
about new not working Notebooks :

But the oustanding question is :

IS THERE ANYBODY RUNNING A NEW NOTEBOOK P4 SYSTEM SUCESSFULLY ?
So I would like to get to know this in detail.

The only sucess I had was with my old Bullmann 300 Mhz, 256 MB WIN 98,
where I can run STS 4000 with 64 voices and some effects.

So here is the detailed list about new notebooks (all 512 or 1024 MB RAM)
that did NOT work :
(I tried to load the STS 4000 into the project adding up more and more voices)

with the Compaq Business Notebook nx 7000, WIN XP, with ENE
Card bus Controller
BD 1410, I got an error message

"PCI capcity limit reached"

before I could even play one single voice
same with a Bullman VK5, WIN XP, with ENE Card bus Controller
BD 1410

with Toshiba Satellite 5299-903, Topic 100 Controller, WIN XP,
and Fujitsu Amilo-D Notebook, WIN XP, with 02 Mikro Card Bus
or Gericom Blockbuster, WIN XP, with 02 Mikro Card Bus Controller

I could play about 12 voices (no effects)

By the way SONY VAIO with the "forbidden" Ricoh controller did act close to this (10 voices).

So I guess it is not just a question of card bus controller

dArKr3zIn, you can play 64 voices STS x000
having installed windows xp ?