Is my setup good enough?

G

Gokada

Guest
I'll be running Ableton Live 8 and Reason 5, along with some VST's.

My current PC has:
1. Gigabyte mobo; FSB 800 Mhz
2. CPU: 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4
3. Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (don't laugh); M-Audio Fast Track Pro
4. 2 Gb RAM, PC3200, DDR 400
5. Windows XP SP3
6. 550W Power Supply
7. 200 gig HD (internal); 250 gig HD (external); and another 80 gig HD just sitting around

Some background info: Built this myself (minus the M-Audio) back in 2004 and it's never given me any problems. It's still pretty damn fast too! XP has been extremely stable. I've used Reason 3 on it quite a bit and it held up nicely when I only had 1 gig of RAM. Also have a midi controller and KRK Rockit 5 Studio Monitors.

I guess my biggest worry is the mobo and cpu. I mean they're 7 years old. Not sure if they'll be able to handle those programs. I'll upgrade if I have to but I'd feel dirty laying down $$ if it's not necessary. What do you think? And thanks in advance for any advice/help.

GS
 
Reason is pretty CPU friendly. I used it standalone for a long time on a 1.4GHz CPU w/ 1GB Ram and it ran like a champ up until i got to around 15 NNXT and effects all over the place. I don't have experience w/ Ableton but I can imagine it being CPU friendly too. If it is... it all depends on what VSTs you'll be using. If your VSTs are light, this should be a sufficient setup. But if you have anything heavy duty like an IK Amplitube, or Omnisphere, or anything along those lines... you'll definitely need a stronger CPU.
 
My PC is pretty slow only 1 gb of ram 1.8 ghz. I can run Fl studio 9,4 Kontakt instruments and like 3 more vsts pretty okay.The problem you'll run to is you wont able to mix the songs with all the vsts open, but I get pass this by exporting each audio track and putting it back into fl studio or reaper. Heres a tip when making a song close all your programs, also if you put your desktop theme to classic you will save alot of memory and cpu usage.
 
Live ain't exactly CPU friendly, but can certainly be used. And there's always the freeze/flatten process if things get too heavy.
 
krushing said:
Live ain't exactly CPU friendly, but can certainly be used. And there's always the freeze/flatten process if things get too heavy.
Click to expand...

Hmm, freeze/flatten process? Need to look up that one. Thanks a bunch...

---------- Post added at 08:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:23 AM ----------

Much thanks for the advice from everyone. Perhaps I'll just upgrade the mobo, ram type, and cpu. I can do with an "ok" video card since I'm not a gamer and I don't watch movies on the PC. After looking at prices on Newegg I think, for now, that would be the best way to go. But damn do those iMacs look good!! Oh well, maybe later...
 
What freeze does is it temporarily renders a track with its instruments and effects into an audio track, so you free up the resources of those virtual instruments/effects running in realtime. Temporary in this case means that it keeps everything intact in the background, so you can always unfreeze the track and tweak what needs to be tweaked. Flatten just renders everything permanently into audio ("flattening" the effects/instruments stack).
 
Thanks for that info krushing. Funny thing, seems as if my mobo decided to help me with my decision. I get power but no boot up. I still didn't want to drop $2K on a mac so I spent 1/4 of that and upgraded/fixed the PC...
 
U seem good to me. Reason is str8 u dnt need super pc to use it. The other program I would say dnt add to many how powered plugings
 
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