Cores and VSTi the facts UPDATED/DDR3/nehalem

Did you try more then one instance of the VSTi?

should I go with the Q9450? Is it really worth the extra 70 bux or so?

Yes!

ORIGINAL: John

Did you try more then one instance of the VSTi?

Yea, seriously. Without loading up multiple VST/VSti this test is worthless. Multiple cores shine when you have complex songs.

How many VSTs, VSTis and tracks did you have total in the project?

EDIT: I guess your point about large amounts of samples (implying low FX plugin count = low number crunching) might be valid. But how many people use Sonar with heavy sample loading but light processor loading?

SilkTone

ORIGINAL: SilkTone

ORIGINAL: John

Did you try more then one instance of the VSTi?

Yea, seriously. Without loading up multiple VST/VSti this test is worthless. Multiple cores shine when you have complex songs.

How many VSTs, VSTis and tracks did you have total in the project?

Agreed, this post is very light on facts. With only one VSTi instance, only one core will really get loaded in Sonar, as one VSTi will only run under a single thread. There would need to be at least 4 VSTi instances before this was a fair contest, but we don't know any details.

Scott made a valid point, but it just isnt useful if you are willing to get a GOOD Quad

yeah people argued with him a lot about a fact and thats only why he posted this,

So n e ways lol... q9450 is the best bang fo buck right?

I have to change my board to get 1600 FSB though right?

Does anyone know where in the life cycle of these things we're in?

The Q6600 is $200. The Q9450 is $329. That's USD at Newegg.

Any informed speculation on when the Q9450 might approach the mid 200's?

ORIGINAL: John

At MicroCenter its $279. Here

Ooo nice. That's getting close, isn't it? Thanks for posting that!

Funny when I went to the usual price comparison sites, I didn't find it anywhere for ,uch less than at Newegg. Do you think MicroCenter is just a fluke, or the front end of a trend?

I am waiting for the 16 cores. I was an early adopter of the Q6600. I think based on a purely unscientific analysis that my Q6600 runs about 10x what my pentium d did. That is based on freezing a track of say 3 minutes with effects applied and watching how long it took before and after to do the freeze.

By the way, the DAW Gurus at Sonica tell me there is an issue with the 8 cores and the current version of Sonar. I cant seem to figure where it is on their website tonight (long day) but two days ago Guy was pointing me towards an article showing that with the 8 cores, Sonar is having issues in maxing out one core, leaving one apparently idle and using the other 6 about 20-30%. CAKE - is this something that will be addressed in the next versions?

Wait a minute, wait a minute, I think the article is coming through now. -->XXXXXXX<--

By the way, the DAW Gurus at Sonica tell me there is an issue with the 8 cores and the current version of Sonar. I cant seem to figure where it is on their website tonight (long day) but two days ago Guy was pointing me towards an article showing that with the 8 cores, Sonar is having issues in maxing out one core, leaving one apparently idle and using the other 6 about 20-30%. CAKE - is this something that will be addressed in the next versions?

We know about this and its well documented on the forum. Its not just 8 cores it effects the 4 core chips as well. I wouldn't worry about it. CW knows too.

John,

Thanks! It's great to be here, although I've been here before for a long time, just not as a part of Cakewalk.

You know, about the quad-core updating and "when should I upgrade" question ... Scott has said the best advice many times ... its all about what you need to do and when you need to do it. If you HAVE TO get work done now and your current machine is not cutting it (i.e. dropouts, having to bounce to disk or freeze a lot), then it is time to upgrade. I think that kind of sums it up in a nutshell.

6 Instances of Kontakt3 in rack
All using K3 included Vienna instruments
Default dfd settings
All running live, no freeze, no bounce
MIDI tracks running to every patch

1
Violin ens14 (all)
Viola ens10 (all)
Cello ens8 (all)
Bass ens6 (all)

2
Piccolo (all)
Flute (all)
Oboe (all)
FrenchOboe (all)
EnglHorn (all)
Clarinet (all)

3
TrumpEns3 (all)
FrnHornEns4 (all)
Trombens3 (all)
Tuba (all)

4
Violin ens14 (all)
Viola ens10 (all)
Cello ens8 (all)
Bass ens6 (all)

5
Tenor Recorder (all)
Piccolo Recorder (all)
Low Whistle (all)

6
Timpani Hits

for those who missed the updated part in first post


Quad core 3.2GHz 1600 FSB DDR3 1600 CL7
128 buffer clean

this is a huge performance gain.
compared to the 3.0GHz dual or quad... remember if this was a dual core 3.2 it would be the same..

In another thread I just posted in this was said:

droddey:
quote:

No 32 bit version of any OS will support over 4GB of RAM. In fact, do to page memory allocation, you will only see about 2.8-3.2GB on a Win XP 32 bit or Vista 32bit machine.

Actually, that's not technically true. Any *single process* will only see 4GB of RAM, because the virtual address space will be 32 bits due to register size. But on an Intel CPU anyway, a 32 bit OS can make use of much more RAM than that, and spread it out among the individual processes. It's basically the same segmented architcture that has been there since the 186/286 years, but the segments are now 32 bit. The full theoretical memory capacity of a 32 bit Intel CPU is quite huge for that reason, and it doesn't have any of the complexities (for the programs I mean) that the original (16 bit) memory segments caused since each process will just see a single, flat 32 bit address space. It's only the OS that has to deal with that extra layer of virtual address mapping.

It's just that Windows, I assume for reasons of compabitility with other CPUs that don't provide that capability, doesn't choose to make use of this feature. It's kind of a bummer since in the end Windows' multi-platform capabilties came to naught and it really only is ever deployed on CPUs that do provide this segmented architecture, AFAIK. Of course it would also make the OS memory management more comlex, but the CPU provides a lot of support for that stuff.

So anyway, it wouldn't give SONAR any more *virtual* memory space, because of the issue of mapping things into each process' high GB of virtual address space. But it could mean that SONAR could have a full 4GB of physical memory to itself because the overall memory capacity could be 64MB or whatever and each process that required it could have that full 4GB, with none taken by other processes. That wouldn't make a huge difference for some folks, but for others it could very much help if they are running other large apps at the same time.


So this could mean I can rewire Tascam Gigastudio into Cakewalk Sonar 7. So a system with 10 GB memory and 8 cores on WINXPPRO should show 3.2 free memory. But when the two apps are started and setup both should get their own space of 4GB and thus the system benefits of cores and memory on a dual quad. Offcourse the system should have three disks. One OS one SAMPLES and one audio.

JCCHILD have you tested this and is there added benefit?

Muziekschuur