Members BushmasterM4 Posted November 9, 2011 Members Share Posted November 9, 2011 Finally installed all of the updates for Win 7 and tweaked it. Combination of "Black Vipyr" web site tweaks and "ProTools" manual tweaks. So far its really rock solid. I loaded up an old mix in Tracktion 3 (my old DAW), which I will still use until I am comfortable with PT10, and the processor usage dropped a lot. My old system was an AMD Phenom II 965 (quad core) with XP sp3 and 4 gigs memory. The new i7 has 16 gigs of memory (win 7 pro). The cpu usage on that mix went from 35% down to 15%. There were 30 tracks with one or more plugin on each track. So I am quite happy. I played with PT10 and I can see that its going to be an easy learning curve. But I do see myself investing in another monitor. Tracktion 3 is a one page DAW and it is a nice GUI. I find PT10 to be easy to navigate also, but, I like having the "Track and MIx" view both open. I have a 27" monitor and another would make it work great. I did have an issue with the original motherboard I bought. I always in the past have used Gigabyte boards and went to Microcenter with the intention on buying another. But I let the salesman there talk me into an ASUS. Well the board was paper thin and after installing window 7 and PT and Tracktion, both DAW's had severe latency delay. I pushed the latency down to 32 and it didnt help. My old system I could run it at 256 and the delay was no an issue. So I tore the damn thing apart and exchanged it for a Gigabyte board and it works great at 256. And it works click and stutter free at 32 even. Granted that was with only a few tracks, but the CPU usage was nil. So I cant wait to load it down and see how low I can go. But so far, knock on wood, Im a happy camper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 If you get the "Complete Production Toolkit" you could use the "Disk Cache" features... and then being able to use up to 13 GB of RAM to run all of your sessions entirely in RAM. (Still, with 16GB of RAM I think you will still be able to do terrific, huge mixes on that machine). Congrats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BushmasterM4 Posted November 9, 2011 Author Members Share Posted November 9, 2011 That tool kit is on the pricey side !!! It would be nice, but. Wouldnt a Solid State Drive do the same thing but alot cheaper ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted November 9, 2011 CMS Author Share Posted November 9, 2011 I always in the past have used Gigabyte boards and went to Microcenter with the intention on buying another. But I let the salesman there talk me into an ASUS. Well the board was paper thin and after installing window 7 and PT and Tracktion, both DAW's had severe latency delay. I tore the damn thing apart and exchanged it for a Gigabyte board and it works great at 256. And it works click and stutter free at 32 even. That kind of scares me, more than most things I hear about computers, that two supposedly similarly capable motherboards can be so different in performance. Do you suppose that could have something to do with a driver for something on the motherboard that isn't directly supported by Windows? While your observation about the difference in physical characteristics is useful, I didn't expect that there would be that much difference in actual performance of an actual application. I've been on the verge of posting a "Help me build my Pro Tools 10 Computer" query here. I, too, have a local Micro Center, and I plan to buy as many parts there as I can. I wasn't looking at something as high powered as yours since I don't expect to use it for anything but testing hardware and plug-ins, but I had picked out a Gigabyte motherboard that was a likely candidate based on their reputation and the ports and expansion slots it has, but I couldn't find any reason based on what other specs are published to choose one over another (other, of course, than price). How do you figure these things out anyway? Cut and try, as you did, in this case? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted November 9, 2011 Members Share Posted November 9, 2011 That kind of scares me, more than most things I hear about computers, that two supposedly similarly capable motherboards can be so different in performance. Go to the Sonar forums, and you'll see some people saying "Oh, it's so unreliable, it crashes all the time" followed by extremely puzzled people (including myself) who find that it's a very stable program that, at least in my case, crashes maybe once every 3-4 weeks (and it gets HEAVY usage). I attribute that variance to hardware variants. I've never regretted getting a PC Audio Labs computer, because they know what they're doing a lot more than I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BushmasterM4 Posted November 9, 2011 Author Members Share Posted November 9, 2011 Ive been building PC since the 386 days. Ive tried ASUS, Gigabyte, DFI, EVGA and MSI and a few that are no longer with us. Out of all Gigabyte and DFI are the only two that I never have problems with. DFI in the mid and late 2000's were the the best made for fast gaming rigs. The DFI Lan Party's were the ones to get (and still are). I actually have 2 PC's (out of 9 in my house) running Lan Party's and they are rock solid and fast. But they are on the pricey side and many consumer stores no longer carry them. But on my personal rig (gaming and such) its a DFI Lan Party. But I have never tried them in a DAW rig. I tried an EVGA board running an AMD Anthlon 850 (few years back in my first DAW rig and it was slow. I then went with a Gigabyte and my problems went away. And the firewire chipset led me to the Gigabyte brand. They use Texas Inst. based firewire in most, not all. And Ive stuck with them 4 rigs later. Now I use a firewire card so that gives me more choices and like I mentioned the salesman said "ASUS" and I tried it and it stunk. Mike Rivers, on your question, they were clean installs with both boards. Same hardware different motherboards. I even moved my firewire card to different slots in both with zero changes. Sometimes changing slots can make a huge difference. Anyway, on my experiences alone, I am sticking with Gigabyte. Plus they use quality components and the boards are many ply thick. That ASUS I tried was like paper. Here is a Gigabyte link showing the quality of their stuff. Watch the video !!!! http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/243/2x-copper-pcb.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BushmasterM4 Posted November 9, 2011 Author Members Share Posted November 9, 2011 PS. Hard drive prices have sored. When I went to Microcenter last week or so ago. I bought a WD 1 terabyte drive for my wifes pc and it was $119. In April I bought a Seagate Barracuda 1 TB for $69 !!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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