John/ Dave,

Thanks for your advice.  This is confirmed by Cakewalk Support in their following response:

"Yes, you would need to upgrade your system to a multi-core processor. This is definitely one of the basic requirements for a system that is compatible with SONAR X2."

Looks like I have some decisions to make (that may involve "de Wife").

Thanks for responding.

Build your own system.  It's pretty straightforward and you save quite a bit of money too.

Your computer will not handle very much in any modern DAW, especially if like me you load up a lot of VSTs. How much? I don't know. I did try Sonar x1 on a dual-core Athlon 64 chip by AMD - made in 2005, socket 939, 3Gb RAM, and it was a dog. But then, so was Reason and Fruity Loops. Then I built my own rig, a Core i7 with 16Gb of RAM, and got an external sound card (Focusrite Saffire 14), and my whole music creation life changed. I have yet to reach a point where Sonar x1 overloads my computer; it just runs and runs with no crashes or pops as long as I stay around the 48khz and 24 bit region, with about a 512 - 1024 buffer size depending on the project. I make experimental and industrial / metal stuff, so at any time I could have 60-70 tracks on a longer song, each with their own VSTs. Sonar x1 usually handles it just very well - sometimes I will need to turn down a VST's setting to low quality (they render at high qualities) for monitoring to eek out some extra performance. I would not recommend Sonar X1 for your computer unless you are just straight tracking - but if you are just straight tracking then Studio 7 should meet your needs...

EDIT: I was thinking in terms of "sets of loops or parts" when I said 60-70 tracks. Sonar X1 does 30 tracks easily for me, so I expect X2 would be comparable.

LordElpus


Build your own system.  It's pretty straightforward and you save quite a bit of money too.

+1   :)

Thanx for the advice Lord......although I'm not sure I'm that ambitious (nice avatar Hammer).

Was actually scoping out a Dell yesterday with the following vitals:
Windows 8, 64-bit 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3770 processor (3.40 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.90 GHz)
16GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz - 4 DIMMs

It's an obvious upgrade over the relic I have but I don't know enough about computers to tell if it's good enough to be a solid platform for the next 5 years or so.  Not sure what 16-bit means or if Windows 8 is stable at this point on most software programs.

My apology for the "system seems ok" response. I was jumping into conclusion by just reading your chip's GHz speed.

I would say any new computer with i7 onwards would be a solid platform. I've built mine 2 years ago and is still going great and will serve me well for many years.

I'm currently on the look out for an all-in-one (AIO from Dell, MSI) type of PC as a notebook alternative, for site use, and probably some live gigs. Not in a hurry to buy now, just curious to find out if it's suitable for DAW as well.