So when you're considering a new PC or an upgrade to an existing one, think about how you're going to be pushing the system. Scott's results also suggest that switching from DDR2 to the newer, faster (and more expensive) DDR3 RAM may be of benefit in this particular scenario. ![]() (Scott's tests use NI's Kontakt software, running an orchestral mock-up that fills a couple of gigabytes of RAM with sample data.)įor once, available processing power isn't the bottleneck, but rather memory bandwidth: the CPU meter might display plenty of power in reserve, but the sheer volume of data being shifted between the RAM and CPU becomes the limiting factor. His results suggest that if you routinely load lots of sample data into system RAM, a processor such as Intel's E8400, with two cores running at 3.0GHz and an FSB of 1333MHz, will manage to run considerably more voices before suffering audio glitching than a four-core Q6600 running at 2.4GHz with a lower FSB of 1066MHz. Scott Child of ADK Pro Audio ( has been carrying out some very interesting tests. However, for some music applications, memory bandwidth becomes more important than extra cores, and you may achieve better performance if you opt for a faster clocking dual-core processor that runs with a faster Front Side Bus. Those of you who are buying or building music PCs at the moment because you want to run more plug-ins and software synths will tend to automatically migrate towards quad-core or even dual quad-core (octo–core) processors. So I'm perfectly happy with my current PC for the time being. I certainly, at one stage, considered swapping my E6600 2.4GHz dual-core CPU for a Q6600 2.4GHz quad–core, but although I've reviewed a few sample libraries and VST Instruments that demand higher than normal processing power (mostly due to convolution features), I've still yet to run out of processing power in my own projects with the dual-core. However, in the column mentioned above I also observed that I felt I'd be unlikely to need to upgrade by late 2008. For the previous seven years my rule of thumb had been that a PC musician who wanted to be able to run the latest audio software would, on average, need a major computer upgrade every two years. My own dual-core PC was built in December 2006. ![]() Read on to find out why.īack in PC Notes March 2008, I discussed the colossal leaps in processing performance we've seen over the last few years, and the growing number of musicians who were already climbing off the PC upgrade bandwagon because they were perfectly happy with the hardware they already had. If you're shopping for a new CPU, the number of processor cores it has may not be the most important factor in how well it runs your music software.
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